The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Part I (Goetheanum)
“Graceful Region (Ariel Scene)” from ‘Faust II’ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Nile Delta“ by Wladimir Solowjow (Russian) ‘World Soul Spirits’ by Rudolf Steiner
“Laurore sallume” by Victor Hugo
“Spring“ by Rudolf Steiner
“Proemion” by]. W.v. Goethe
From the “Chymischen Hochzeit” by Valentin Andreae with music by Max Schuurman

Part II (Joiner's workshop)
Elegiac prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Heiß mich nicht reden“ (Mignon II) by J. W. v. Goethe
“Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” (Mignon III) by J. W. v. Goethe
“Erlkönig“ by J. W. v. Goethe with ‘Elven prelude’
Prelude ‘Look around you’
“The little bouquet” by J. W. v. Goethe
Cheerful prelude
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Prayer: The Deer”; “The Lion”; “The Priestess”; “From the Suburbs”

Dear attendees!

We will be giving you a eurythmy performance here today, and I will take the liberty of saying a few words in advance about the nature of our eurythmic art. This art is based above all on a real, visible language. You will see gestures, movements, performed by individuals, groups of people and so on here on stage. What is presented here is not intended to be some kind of mimic or pantomime performance, or even something dance-like, as we understand these things today. Rather, it is about exploring, through sensual and supersensory observation – if I may use this Goethean expression – which movement tendencies underlie our speech organs when phonetic language is produced or when singing is produced . In this case, however, it is more a matter of movement tendencies that, I would say, are still disappearing as they arise and then transform into that which, as a movement of the air, underlies the tone, the sound.

These movements, which only half arise, but which as such lie quite clearly, I would say in the will of the human being, in the unconscious will of the human being, are carefully studied and are now transferred according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphic view of the whole human being, namely to that part of the human being that can most directly reveal the soul's inner being: to the human arms and hands, which are then supported, admittedly, by movements of the rest of the human organism.

When I say, according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphic view, it means that, as Goethe saw in the individual leaf of the idea a whole plant and in turn in the whole plant a more intricately designed leaf, so in the processes that take place in an organ system, one can see something like an expression of the whole human being. This is indeed the case when a person makes use of the activities of his speech organs. What we otherwise feel as the content of our full humanity is expressed, so to speak, through this one organ system. And so, like Goethe, we can look at the whole plant as a more complicated leaf, and in a sense we can make the whole human being an organ of expression for his soul and spirit. And then something like a visible language emerges, which is the basis of our eurythmy.

It is therefore important to bear in mind that the movements that are performed are not random gestures that would be added at random to one or other expression of the soul, but that everything that is done in terms of the smallest and small movements here is subject to strict inner laws, just as the formation of language itself is.

Anyone who has an appreciation of the eurythmic quality of the way language is treated by the true poet, something of what one might call the pictorial, painterly or musical representation of language, will also have to approve of an extension of the artistic formal language into this eurythmic quality, for artistic reasons, I think. For anyone who is interested in art at all is also interested in expanding artistic means.

What the poet actually wants is based on something that, I would say, is one layer deeper than what we reveal through language in ordinary prosaic expression. When we reveal ourselves in ordinary prosaic expression through the literal, then basically it is the thought that is embodied in our language. And it is quite certain that all thought kills what is actually artistic.

The actual artistry of poetry makes use only of thought, of the literal content. But what is truly artistic about poetry is the special formation of language, the relationship between one sound and another, between high and low tones, and so on and so forth. It is that which presupposes that the human being not only has an understanding of the meaningful that is expressed through his language, but also has an understanding of the phonetic, of the sound itself.

For what appears here as eurythmy is not the same gesture that we use to accompany our speech today. The gestures we use to accompany our speech do, to a large extent, come from the unconscious, but they are connected to the meaning of what we are saying. And the details of the eurythmic movements performed here are essentially connected to the sounds and tones themselves.

So we can say that when we see one or other of these movements performed, it is the reaction of the human soul, not to the meaning expressed by some sequence of sounds, but to the sequence of sounds themselves, which produces sympathetic, antipathetic, joyful, sorrowful impressions and so on, albeit in a finely nuanced way. Nuances of the soul and its inner movement, which are brought about by the sound itself, are to come to light through eurythmy. Therefore, precisely that which is actually volitional, that is, emotional, in the artistic can come to light through this eurythmy, that is, that which has already stripped away the thought, the inartistic. And those who can immerse themselves in this way of looking at eurythmy will probably find that the very thing the poet struggles with in order to express it in language can be expressed particularly well in the visible language of eurythmy. These are a few words that point to the essence of eurythmy in an artistic sense.

This eurythmy has another side, a hygienic-therapeutic side. The gestures and movements that are made here initially appear to us as something like a visible pronunciation of what is recited here in the poetry, or are intended to be a visible song, a musical element. This eurhythmics is therefore presented as musical and recitative, accompanied.

But at the same time, these movements are such that they follow from the inner laws of the organism itself. Anyone with an appreciation of the human form will know that the outer limbs, as you know, extend into the most intimate structures of all the organs. When the human form is at rest, it is in a constant state of transition into movement. We cannot, my dear attendees, look at a head, for example, which is intended to be at rest [gap in shorthand], or at each finger, which is intended to grasp, in its resting form [gap in shorthand], or at how it looks in motion, how it must appear at rest.

In this way, however, it is possible to extract, as it were, the forms of movement from what man is as an organized being, which are thoroughly healthy forms of movement of the human being. And in this way it is possible to extract certain forms of movement from healthy people, but also from sick people (this is only hinted at), which can also be applied to the medical field (this is only hinted at).

The third [area of eurythmy is] didactic and pedagogical. We introduced [eurythmy as a subject] in the Waldorf School, founded by [Emil Molt], from the very beginning. It represents a kind of soulful gymnastics. And it must be said that one day we will think about these things more impartially and without prejudice than is already possible for people today. One day we will see that our present-day gymnastics are actually only taken from the laws of the human body, so that children derive great joy and devotion from this soulful gymnastics from the very beginning. They feel that they are entering into a life of movement that has been drawn from the nature of the human being itself. It can be said that it is quite possible to perceive in children that the soul forces can also be cultivated in this way through eurythmy, namely the initiative of the will, which is not really expressed through ordinary gymnastics. I would say that a certain efficiency and a certain courage come from ordinary gymnastics. But it is the inner initiative that comes from the soul, and this is what can be cultivated in children through eurythmy.

And so this eurythmy has three sides. But what is artistic for us here is [illegible word]. And this artistic element is indeed only just beginning today. I must therefore ask again and again to be lenient with what [gap in shorthand]. We ourselves are the strictest critics of what we have dared to begin with this eurythmy. But one must consider that eurythmy uses that [illegible word] as its means of expression, its tool, which summarizes all the secrets of the world, which is a real microcosm: it uses the human organization itself.

Goethe says that man arrives at art by taking order, harmony, measure and meaning from the whole of the rest of the world and expressing them in his production. When man borrows order, harmony, measure and meaning from the world through mystical vision and expresses them through his own intention, thus making himself, as it were, a work of art, then the artistic must come to expression in the best way. Therefore, one may also believe that, despite the fact that eurythmy is only just beginning today, it will have developmental possibilities in itself, so that one day, when it has been further developed, it will be able to present itself in a fully valid way as a younger art alongside the older, fully valid arts.

We will, honored attendees, have the first part of our presentation here in this room today. Then there will be an intermission after the performance of The Chemical Wedding. And for the following part, that is, for what comes after the intermission, I ask the honored audience to please go to the rehearsal hall.

The following words are from Karl Schubert, who only took down fragments of Rudolf Steiner's address in shorthand.

A visible language is expressed through the movements of the human body in space. These are not random gestures or facial expressions, but rather this visible language is truly brought out according to the same laws by which the soul and spirit of the human being reveal themselves in musical song or in spoken language. The aim is to explore, through sensory and supersensory observation, which movement tendencies are stimulated – not actual movements, as movement tendencies are transformed into sound vibrations. These are transferred to the movements of the whole person or whole groups of people.

This is based on Goethe's view. This Goethean view leads to seeing the whole plant in the individual organ, both super-sensibly and sensually. There is a whole plant in each individual leaf. What is seen in the forms can be applied to human activity. In the larynx and its neighboring organs, movement tendencies are generated during singing, in a closed human organ system. If one gets to know these movement tendencies and transfers these movements to the limbs of the whole human being, then one gets the whole human being on stage as a speech organ, and one can express the same thing that one can bring to light through singing or through poetry through the whole human being. In this way, one achieves an essential foundation for something artistic.

In our language, the content of thought appears as a particularly intrusive element. The thought pushes the artistic back. In language, will and thought meet. The thought comes from the head. It is an incomplete means of expression. Human will comes from the whole person, and so what comes from the will is what is effective and powerful in language when language is to be artistically shaped through poetry.

Those who have an organ for rejoicing when the field of art is expanded will welcome such an attempt as an attempt to expand the artistic. But the fact that these movements come about as I have described them does not make them tendentious. They arise from the whole inner lawfulness of the human organism. This inner lawfulness is something wonderful when one gets to know it. Consider the wonderful formation of the human hand. There we have the form as the sculptor reproduces it in a static way. One cannot understand a human hand without understanding one's own finger formation in such a way that it can move, without understanding the connection between the movement in the human being and the human form. The one who sees the eurythmic should have before him in direct contemplation that which can arise in the human organism in a completely lawful way in terms of movement. You can present a poem in such a way that you see how the whole human being comes into activity, into movement. Nietzsche knew what he said: He meant that what the human being wishes to reveal from the fully human can only be expressed in visible speech, whereas what is expressed in phonetic speech and song does not come from the fully human. Those who demand that the human being add pantomime to his movements would demand something grimacing.

We will hear something poetic. This declamation must become something different if it is to accompany what is being presented through eurythmy. We have indeed strayed far from what Schiller had in his soul when, before writing down the literal words of a poem, he wrote down an indeterminate melody. Goethe had more of a poetic-pictorial quality in his soul. It is not the prosaic that is at the root of it; we have to go back to the shaping of the sound, to where the linguistic expression becomes an image in the sounding. If you bring the eurythmic into the language in this way, then the declamation is able to accompany the eurythmic. Goethe therefore rehearsed the iambs with a baton. The poetic lies in the rhythmic, not in the literal.

Therapeutic-medical: Movements can be derived that have a healing and hygienic effect. The educational-didactic, which has proven itself in Waldorf schools. It can be clearly seen how the child, by immersing themselves in soulful gymnastics, feels that every single movement comes from the laws of the human being. The human being itself is taken as a means of expression.

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum building, the second part in the carpentry workshop.

1. Part (Goetheanumbau)

“Symbolum“ by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Weltenseelengeister” by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (10) by Rudolf Steiner
“Spring” by Rudolf Steiner with music by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (11) by Rudolf Steiner
“The posy“ by J. W. v. Goethe
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals ‘Highland’ by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the soul calendar (12) by Rudolf Steiner
“World soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman

Part two (carpentry)

Music by Leopold van der Pals
“Charon“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Mignon” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Zum neuen Jahr” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Three Gypsies“ by Nikolaus Lenau with music by Jan Stuten
“Anchovy Salad” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Barkers“ by J. W. v. Goethe
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Seance” by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear attendees, Allow me to say a few words to introduce the performance, as I always do before these eurythmy performances. This is not done in order to somehow explain the artistic performance; that would be inartistic, the artistic must speak for itself. But in this eurythmy we are dealing with a special formal language that is unfamiliar, and with drawing from artistic sources that we have not yet become accustomed to. And I would like to say a few introductory words about these sources and this formal language. What you see on stage is either an individual moving person — moving in their limbs — or moving groups of people. None of the movements presented here are pantomime or facial expressions. If one still sees something of that kind in the performances, it is because eurythmy is still in the early stages of development. And everything dance-like, mime-like and so on must be overcome in this eurythmic art. What underlies it is a real, visible language. Every single expression is not taken from the momentary meaning of this or that word, which eurythmy accompanies, or this or that musical motif; rather, one is dealing with a real language that is drawn from the human organism as elementarily as the sound language, as the phonetic language itself.

It would, of course, be quite impossible to keep asking, 'What does this mean? What does that mean?' about the details of spoken language. This is also not possible with this real, visible language of eurythmy; rather, the forms of eurythmy are based on a real, if I may use Goethe's expression, sensual-supersensory study of spoken language and singing itself.

Our larynx and speech organs as a whole are designed as a part of the human organism in such a way that they want to carry out certain movements. I have to put it this way, because it is first and foremost the predispositions for movement that are involved. These predispositions do not come directly out of the larynx and the other speech organs during ordinary speaking and singing, but are transformed into vibrations of the air, and this is what gives us the sound of speech or singing. But if one really studies what is stored in the larynx and its neighboring organs, as I said, through sensory-supersensory observation, then one can transfer what is stored for a single organ complex to the whole human being, entirely according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphosis teaching, which of course then has to be implemented artistically. In particular, the expressive organs of movement, the arms and hands, can be used to convey the same effect as speech.

And in this way, with regard to human nature, one arrives at something more artistic than even speech or song can be. For in our words, even in poetically and artistically formed language, we have before us a combination of what takes place through the will of man and through the thoughts of man in connection with each other. But all thought, in essence, is inartistic. If our thinking is to be put into action, if one is to look for meaning, expression and so on in the syntactical or other sense, then, to the same extent that one has to do this, what wants to reveal itself becomes inartistic. The poet is always struggling between what is beauty of sound sequence, sound design, rhythm, beat, and what the whole inner movement of the linguistic is, and what is thought. The conceptual is, so to speak, only something that must necessarily be taken along if the sound is to be heard.

But if we go back to the actual element of movement, to the disposition to move in the speech organs, and transfer it to the whole human being, so that the whole human being or groups of people become, as it were, visibly moving larynx and speech organ, then we go back to the element of will. And that emerges from the full human being, the whole human being. It can be seen from this that, firstly, even in a primitive language, a single word is often used for movements that are carried out by the human being and for the sounds that accompany them when they are sung or recited. Primitive man moves when he abandons himself freely to his inner being, in the process of transforming language into art. Hence a word for human artistic movement and for the sung or recited word in primitive language.

On the other hand, we can say that everything that is a mental element in poetry recedes behind the purely formal, that is, the actual artistic element; this comes through as a will element, as a movement element – and movement is always a manifestation of the will – this comes through this eurythmic movement entirely.

Anyone who is able to study the human organism as a whole or in part will say to themselves: the human organism at rest has a certain shape. So now we see the shape, let us say of a hand. We cannot be satisfied with just looking at the hand at rest. Every finger, every surface on the finger, everything about the finger is such that it wants to move out of the shape into movement. If one discovers the laws, as must be the case for eurythmy, where the entire human form wants to pass over, in a very elementary, natural way, into movements that are inherent in it, then one comes to a pure expression of will, to a spiritualized expression of will, and is then able to detach the poetic, the truly poetic, from the literal and to express through the word and through this form of movement more and more that which underlies the actual artistic aspect of poetry in the real poet, in the real artist.

It is therefore important not to believe that one can directly indicate every single gesture in a mimic way in the poem without the accompanying movement. Just as in spoken language itself, the essential, insofar as spoken language is artistically formed, lies in the succession of sounds in the visualization of the sounds, so too here nothing lies in the individual gesture, which is not a gesture at all, but rather, as in music, it lies in the succession of sounds, in the shaping of the sounds - in the movement, the succession of movement, the actual element of the artistic in eurythmy is in the succession of movement. And just as little as one can say in the depths of one's being, when confronted with language, that one wants to bring it to some kind of understanding in the first immediate impression, [but] one simply grasps it in terms of feeling, just as little can one say of eurythmy: this gesture does not fit with this or that that is at its basis. Rather, the aim is to be able to feel the linguistically visible element in eurythmy as such. Eurythmy as such is not yet art. Only then must that which is drawn from the organism in the form of movement be shaped artistically.

Recently, we have endeavored to achieve a great deal in this direction, particularly in the shaping of movement. Those of you who have seen eurythmy before will notice how the forms that are usually more silent, with which we introduce or end a poem, express not only the moving people or groups of people, but also the mood, beat and rhythm of the poem. Thus you will see moving people or groups of people on stage; you will hear what is presented in the movement of eurythmy accompanied by recitation or music. However, it must be noted from the outset that the recitation that has to accompany this eurythmy must now return to the truly artistic element of recitation and declamation.

This artistic element of declamation has, of course, been much maligned in recent times. I use this expression for the reason that those insults that have occurred certainly did not arise out of mere ignorance, but out of ill will, which is connected with all sorts of things, and in particular arose out of an unartistic sensibility that is so widespread in the present day. We appreciate all too little in the present what it means that a true poet like Schiller did not start with the literal meaning of the most important of his poems, but rather started from an indefinite feeling of a melody and only then, I might say, lined up the literal meaning with this musical element. Goethe started more from a figurative-imaginative point of view. But [on this figurative] - which is also expressed in rhythm, beat and so on - and on the musical, the actual artistic of poetry is based, not on the literal content. Just because something is inartistic in our time, one cannot take that into account, because in the emphasis of the pure prose content, in the recitation or in the declamation, something special is being attempted. I would like to say that the inability to feel artistically about recitation today has led to these smear campaigns being unleashed in recent times, especially against recitation to accompany our eurythmy. And it is precisely this form of recitation that will have to prevail because it goes back to what is already eurythmic, namely also musical and imaginative, in language itself.

Just as eurythmy can be accompanied by recitation and declamation, since it is intended to be only a different expression of what is heard, so can eurythmy be accompanied by music. You can sing in these eurythmic movements just as you can reveal yourself through sound. And when music is accompanied by eurythmy, it can be understood as singing in visible motion, and nothing else.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the artistic side of eurythmy. I would just like to mention that eurythmy also contains two other elements. One is a hygienic-therapeutic element, because it can be drawn from the human organism – from that which is already within it, that which occurs in movements. Therefore, these movements can also be transformed into healing movements. A start has already been made on this recently. Now, this side of eurythmy, the hygienic-therapeutic side, will also be further developed.

The third element is the pedagogical-didactic element, which has already proven itself in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, founded by Emil Molt and led by me, where, in addition to gymnastics, this spiritualization of human movement in eurythmy is introduced to children as soon as they enter elementary school and then continued as a compulsory subject through all school grades throughout.

It may be said that every movement that a child has to perform is not merely carried out from the physical-physiological, but from the whole human being, who is spirit, soul and body. So that the child feels from the outset: it is making movements into which its soul-spiritual flows. The children feel this as something completely natural. And what is more, the fact that children feel so completely in their element is also based on the fact that this eurythmy is particularly suitable not only for developing the physical structure of the limbs and for evoking physical dexterity in movement, but also for evoking the will initiative that our time and probably also the next generation will so urgently need. What eurythmy offers children is education in the will initiative.

I will not go as far as a very famous contemporary physiologist – you would be amazed if I were to mention his name – who, after such introductory words, when he was watching a performance, told me that gymnastics, which are often overestimated today, are not a means of education, but a barbarism. As I said, it was not I who said it, but a famous contemporary physiologist. One could say that this gymnastics, which is based purely on external, physical considerations, this gymnastics that supports the physical, must be complemented by that which is then the spiritualized gymnastics for children, which can be given to the child through eurythmy. The child feels completely at home in its element.

These are the three sides of eurythmy. And here in our performances, it is of course the artistic aspect that comes into its own. And here it may perhaps be said again and again that this eurythmy, if further developed, is truly suited to fulfill that which appeared to Goethe as the highest artistic principle, in that he said: He to whom nature begins to reveal her secret longs for her most worthy interpreter, art - not for the abstract physiology of natural laws , but to the revelation in art.

Man is that which, in essence, he has in his organism as cosmic laws and cosmic secrets. If we set him in motion in such a way that what is grounded in his essence becomes visible in the movement, then we can say: human nature begins to reveal its essence to him who feels a deep longing to bring out this essential humanity in an artistic way from within the human being.

On the other hand, when Goethe says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn produces a summit within himself, takes harmony, order. and meaning together, in order to finally rise to create the work of art - so one may say: an art that does not make use of external instruments, but of the human organism itself as its instrument, as its tool, an art that brings out from this human organism measure, harmony, meaning and so on, such an art has within itself the germs to become more and more perfect.

We are our own harshest critics. I know very well that this eurythmy is only at the beginning of its development. Therefore, I must always apologize to the esteemed audience when such attempts are made. But those who are willing to engage with what is being developed will recognize that if it is properly developed, by us or by others, the eurythmic art will be able to join the other, older, fully-fledged arts.

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum building, the second part in the carpentry workshop.

1. Part (Goetheanumbau)

Part II (carpentry)

Music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Fisherman“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Erlkönig” by J. W. v. Goethe with “Elven Prelude”
“Papillons” by Jean-Philippe Rameau
“Ländliches Lied“ by Robert Schumann
“Offne Tafel” by J. W. v. Goethe
A cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Häschen“ by Christian Morgenstern
“Frohsinn” by Ferdinand Hiller

Dear guests, dear friends!

Allow me to introduce myself with a few words as usual in these eurythmic attempts. Such introductions are not intended to explain the artistic aspect in any way, that would be inartistic; art must speak for itself. But they are done because this eurythmy attempts to reveal itself from artistic sources that are still unfamiliar and in an artistic formal language that is also still unfamiliar. And allow me to say a few words about this source and this formal language.

What will appear on stage is the human being in motion, the human being moving in his limbs, namely in his arms and hands, the human being moving in space, and also groups of people moving in space. But none of this should be understood as dance or pantomime; rather, it is a real, visible language that has come about in such a way that, through sensual and supersensory observation – I deliberately use this Goethean expression – the movement tendencies of the larynx and other speech organs when a person sings or speaks have been researched.

I say: movement tendencies. For in the actual speech and singing organism these movement tendencies do not come to real expression, but are transferred to air movements, and these convey them to the hearing of the sound and the tone. It is not actual air movements that are transmitted to the human speech and song organism, but the movement tendencies that are, as it were, captured in the process of their formation, but which, precisely as an expression of human will, underlie speaking and singing. And these movement tendencies are transmitted to the whole person according to the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. So that what you see on the stage as individual people or groups of people is, in a sense, a moving larynx, language made visible.

Goethe's theory of metamorphosis is something that, according to the current state of our scientific views, cannot yet be fully appreciated today. In the future, it will certainly be seen in a much more positive light than it is today. In the simplest terms, we can express Goethe's theory of metamorphosis in such a way that, in everything, the individual organ – for example, a leaf in the case of a plant – is the transformation of the other organ. All organs are, in a sense, ideally one, only outwardly shaped differently. And again, the whole plant is only a more intricately shaped leaf.

If we apply this theory of metamorphosis, which Goethe, I would like to say, intuitively applied scientifically to the whole plant, if we apply it to the movement tendencies of the human speech and singing organs, then we can say: that which exists in a single, separate organ complex when speaking or singing as movement tendencies, as an expression of the human will, can be transferred to the whole person or even groups of people. However, the sound is only slightly lost as a result. You see the movements, which are then not held in their creation, but are actually performed; you see them in front of you and they reveal themselves as a real visible language.

So it is not about pantomime, not about facial expressions, not about dance. It is about the artistic design of a real language. It must be said: precisely because of this, one is able to bring out what underlies a poem, for example, the artistic quality of the poem, to a very special degree, even beyond human language.

However, one must really take into account what is artistic in a poem, for example. The literal, the prosaic in a poem is not the artistic. Schiller, before he even approached the literal side of his poetry, first had an indeterminate melody in his soul. Goethe rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors as a conductor would with a baton. Both these examples show that the poet, the real poet, is not concerned with the prosaic and literal, but with what actually lies behind the words: the rhythm, the beat, the musical theme that underlies the words or the way they are formulated. Or, as is more the case with Goethe, the pictorial element that lies behind it. This can now be brought out by, as it were, translating it through the tool of the human being himself into a moving sculpture.

It can be said that when a person moves in the ordinary course of life, his movements are adapted, firstly, to his worldly purposes and, secondly, to what is expressed in the form of facial expressions and pantomime. The fact that a person is in motion also expresses something that a person experiences in his motion when he is simply involved in moving and still life. This is, I would say, the one pole: pure purposeful, appropriate motion.

The other pole is language, which is also purely functional and serves human communication or the imparting of knowledge. While through his movements, which primarily serve a useful purpose, man expresses himself outwardly like a member of outer space or at least of necessary life, through language he expresses himself inwardly. The inner self reveals itself. If one wants to shape language poetically, one seeks what should lie behind language. In ordinary spoken language, as well as in scientific language, one aims at what should be expressed through thinking. But thought is something that should never actually play a special role. Because thought as such, as we have it, in ordinary life or in scientific communication, is eminently inartistic. That is why everything that is allegorical or symbolic in art is actually inartistic. The real poet as an artist therefore goes back to the musicality of language or the pictoriality of language in the way he forms language, which is actually already movement behind language.

And indirectly, if poetry is to be expressed through language, one must try to have movement, rhythm, and tact in what is heard. What one tries to develop indirectly by bringing movement into speech in the formation of sounds and tones, what one tries to develop indirectly, the musical element, can now come to fruition in the movement of the human being, which one draws from the cosmos. So that the soul of a poem can actually be expressed through the moving human being, as one can also add to the musical, instead of a song, I would like to say song through the movement of the human being. One can express the musical element through this visible language in the movements of eurythmy just as one can express the musical element through song, through tones. In this way one is indeed able to push back the conceptual element in the poetry, which the poet only needs to use in order to, I would say, string together the actual artistic element.

And the other element contained in every form of poetry, the will element, which comes from the whole human being, not just from the human head, is more fully revealed through the visible language of eurythmy.

Those who have a truly artistic feeling will therefore have no objection to such an expansion of the artistic as it wants to occur in eurythmy, because they will rejoice in every expansion of the artistic. And whoever says, for example, that Goethean poems should not be presented in eurythmy, what would Goethe himself say about that? - would be missing the point entirely. For it is precisely that which is truly significant in poetry that arises from the whole human being, not merely from what can be expressed in words. And it is precisely this fully human aspect that can be expressed through eurythmy. So that much of what, I would say, lies in the deep secrets of poetry can be brought to the surface, can be looked at, precisely through this visible language of eurythmy. And it is on looking, after all, that everything that really constitutes the artistic impression is based.

You will therefore see these eurythmic performances accompanied on the one hand by recitation and declamation – the formed speech sounds are, I would say, only another expression of what is to come to the surface in eurythmy in the human soul – or you will also see them accompanied by music.

With regard to recitation, it must be said that it is particularly necessary to go back to what is actually hidden in the mystery of poetry. And in the future, accompaniment through recitation and declamation must also enter into and return to a better form of recitation and declamation, and return to conditions that no longer exist in our so unartistic time. Today, people particularly love the pointed, and consider that which brings something to light from the surging depths of the soul to be particularly effective, while the truly artistic is based on form, rhythmic composition, and the treatment of language. And it is basically the present-day form of declamation, which really only wants to emphasize the prosaic, the literal, that has emerged from an unartistic point of view and from an inability to appreciate the truly artistic. This is probably why, when a position has been taken in a non-objective way towards eurythmy in recent times – which cannot even be called negative, because one can see its non-objective way – when a position is taken against it, as here, again, with complete reliance on emphasizing the artistic that lies in the musical, pictorial, imaginative, must be [recited]: First of all, there is the artistic element, which is the main thing here.

But there are two other sides to eurythmy: a hygienic and therapeutic side, which is already being developed in training. The movements that are sought in eurythmy arise from the whole organization of the human being in a way that is elementary and natural. So one might say that the movements a person makes when doing eurythmy are movements that the human form, including the inner form, the whole human organization itself, calls for. Therefore, one cannot work directly, as in the art form, which you will see here, but in a metamorphosed, transformed form, one can achieve healing and hygienic effects through these forms. Doctors have already taken up the cause, and this second aspect will therefore also be cultivated.

The third aspect of eurythmy, its educational and didactic side, has already been introduced into the Waldorf School in Stuttgart as a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. Ordinary gymnastics — one day it will be judged more objectively than today. It is based on human physiology and is founded on the idea that the physical body of the human being should be trained in particular. I fully recognize its legitimacy, but I would not go as far as a physiologist who is very famous in the present day, who once told me that I had not gone far enough for him, because he regarded banal gymnastics, ordinary gymnastics, not as a teaching tool but as barbaric; as a physiologist, he saw eurythmy for children as having to stand alongside ordinary gymnastics, not as a teaching tool, but as barbarism.

I myself would like to recognize it, so that one can see that [one] will think in a different way about not just physiological gymnastics, which only focuses on the physical body. So gymnastics should not be abolished by us, but alongside this purely external gymnastics there should be an inspired gymnastics that goes not only to the body but to the body, soul and spirit of the human being. And in the lessons, which have been taught in the Waldorf School for two years now, you can see how children from the age of entering primary school until the age of fourteen or fifteen really feel their way into the movements that come from the body, soul and spirit - not just from the body - how they find something else that is fully appropriate to human nature in eurythmy and take part in this feeling with the most heartfelt joy, because they can reveal their whole human being there. With this feeling, this inner joy, the children devote themselves to these exercises, which I would like to call, from a pedagogical-didactic point of view, soulful, spiritualized gymnastics.

Now, my dear attendees, this pedagogical-didactic side of eurythmy also has the effect, not only, I would like to say, of strengthening muscles and the like in children, but also of developing willpower as a soul element. Therefore, it is a pedagogical tool first and foremost, in that it strengthens the will, the will initiative in the child, which is so necessary in our age.

Thus, eurythmy is a tool that uses the human being as a tool, not external tools, but the tool that lies within the human organization itself. And if Goethe uses the expression: “To whom nature begins to reveal its manifest secret, longs for its most worthy revealer, art” – then one might say: “In the human organism, what is otherwise spread out as secrets of nature, of the world in general, is also united in the cosmos. Therefore, anyone who feels the human organization with all its secrets, with all its laws in a natural way, will also feel the deepest longing for the most worthy interpreter, namely for the artistic interpretation of what is inherent in the human organism itself.

Goethe says very beautifully at another point: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn produces a summit within himself, takes order, harmony, measure and meaning together and ultimately rises to the production of the work of art. If we do not use external instruments, but the human being himself with the secrets of this organization, if we bring order, harmony, meaning of the human being himself and thus rise to the perfect, to the creator of the work of art, then we may say that something artistic in the most comprehensive sense must come about as a result.

Therefore, this eurythmy - although I always apologize to the esteemed audience because we are only at the beginning of the development of this art and many things still need to be perfected - may say that it works from artistic sources and in an artistic formal language that is so capable of perfection - perhaps still through us, or more likely through others - that this eurythmic art will one day be able to present itself as a youngest, alongside the other fully-fledged art forms.

I have only to add that the first part of the performances will take place here in this hall.

The first part of the performance took place in the Goetheanum building, the second part in the carpentry workshop.

Part I (Goetheanum building)

“Göttermahl“ by C. F. Meyer with music by Leopold van der Pals
“L'Art et le Peuple” by Victor Hugo
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (14) by Rudolf Steiner
“Beherzigung” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Soul Calendar (15) by Rudolf Steiner
“Clouds“ by C. F. Meyer
Saying from the Soul Calendar (16) by Rudolf Steiner
“Buttercup Yellow Meadows” by Christian Morgenstern
Saying from the Soul Calendar (17) by Rudolf Steiner
“Vöglein“ (Little bird) by Friedrich Hebbel
“Waldkonzerte” (Forest concerts) by Christian Morgenstern with music by Max Schuurman

II. Part (Joinery) Music by Leopold van der Pals

“The Fisherman” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Violet“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Papillons” by Jean-Philippe Rameau
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorf
“Valet“ by]. J. W. v. Goethe
“The Reviewer” by J. W. v. Goethe
“To the Originals“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Séance” by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear attendees!

Allow me to try to say a few words to introduce this performance, as I usually do before these performances. This is not done for the purpose of explaining the performance itself. Artistic work must speak for itself, through direct observation, and any explanation would, of course, be inartistic. However, since we are dealing here with an artistic activity that draws on artistic sources that are still unfamiliar today and also makes use of an unfamiliar artistic formal language, a few introductory words about these sources and this formal language may be said.

Our eurythmy is not something that could be categorized as pantomime, mime, dance or the like. Rather, it is about bringing something up into a certain artistic sphere that wants to have an effect as a visible language. You see here, esteemed attendees, on the stage the moving human being, namely the human being who is moved in his arms and in his hands, which are the most expressive limbs when you consider the human being as a whole. You will see movements of the human being in space, movements of groups of people.

All this should not be pantomime, not mimicry, nothing that could somehow occur to one as a gesture that is added because one believes that it could have a reference to something that accompanies the presentation in poetry or music, but it is a real, visible language. That which is otherwise revealed in human speech or song through tone or through sound is revealed in eurythmy through the movement of the human being or groups of human beings.

Therefore, what appears as eurythmy cannot be derived from some arbitrary act or from a momentary interpretation of the poetic or the musical. Rather, it is based on a real study of which movement tendencies – I do not say movements, but movement tendencies – the larynx and the other speech organs set when phonetic language or singing

These movement tendencies are, as it were, held back in their formation, in their status nascens, and pass over into those undulations of the air that then convey the tone or the sound. But what is held back in the moment of origin, what thus underlies speech and song out of human nature, can be studied and transferred to the whole human being according to the principle of Goethe's metamorphosis. This Goethean metamorphosis, which Goethe himself only applied to morphology, to the study of living beings, also allows for artistic expression.

In the individual plant leaf, Goethe sees an entire plant, only simpler and more primitive in form. In the whole plant, he sees an individual leaf, a more complicated individual leaf. He then applied the same principle to understanding the forms of other living beings, of man. One day, when certain prejudices of the present so-called scientific method have been overcome, the full scientific fruitfulness of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis will be recognized.

But this theory of metamorphosis, because it leads directly to the visual, allows for artistic expression. And so what can be observed through sensual and supersensual observation of movement tendencies in the human speech and song organs can be applied to the whole human being. And in a sense, you will see in the individual human being, in groups of people here on the stage, moving speech organizations themselves, which visibly, according to exactly the same laws by which metamorphosis gives rise to phonetic language and song, which reveal the human essence according to these laws – and even reveal them in such a way that one is closer to the laws of sound, of tone, insofar as these are lawful, in this visible language than in the case of the spoken word. Not only that the spoken word, especially in the case of the present speaking, leads to the conventional or to that which merely wants to be a communication of the thought - the thought itself can never be artistic, the thought kills the artistic - but language is always formed in a certain way according to logic.

If the poet wants to go back to the artistic, to some extent wants to seek the artistic in the shaping of language, then he must, as far as possible, disregard what makes language logical, what makes it an expression of thought, as much as possible in the already advanced, developed language, and go back to what can be shaped in the tone itself, to the musical in the form of sound. Schiller always had an indefinite melody in mind before he spoke the words of one of his poems, especially the smaller poems that he conceived in his soul. Goethe rehearsed his iambic dramas with his actors with a baton because he wanted to go back to the pictorial – Schiller to the musical, Goethe to the plastic-pictorial. The poet must place into the sound-formation that which basically lies behind the language, that which the language more or less conceals, and this must be done in an, I would say, invisible eurythmy.

But it comes to expression in particular when the musical itself is to reveal itself in song. It is just as possible to sing in this visible language of eurythmy as it is to express a poem in this visible language in terms of its actual artistic content. Anyone who really enjoys the artistic process will therefore welcome with joy every expansion of art through a new formal language, through new artistic sources. And something like eurythmy, which seeks to expand the artistic in a particular area, will not meet with any real resistance from him.

But by using the human being himself as a tool in this eurythmy, one also goes back to a more artistic level than one can achieve in spoken language. After all, thought lies in spoken language. But thought is actually always inartistic. The pictorial is more artistic. Such a pictorial quality is in the broadest sense, as it can naturally be, I would say, the audible – and in the musical, that which lies not in the thought but in the human song, in the human tone, that arises from the whole, from the full human being, arises from this will element.

In language, the thought element and the will element always flow together. The thought element almost completely recedes in the visible language of eurythmy; and the will element, that is, what comes forth from the whole, full human being, comes into its own. Therefore, one can feel in the eurythmic presentation of a poem, for example, what lies at the heart of the poetry as the actual artistic element.

This must also be taken into account when, as is the case here, many poems are accompanied in eurythmy not only by music, which also happens, but also by recitation and declamation, which is then only a different expression, a different revelation of what is being declaimed, recited. But we must realize that we must go back from the present declamation and recitation, which belong to an unartistic age, to real artistic recitation and declamation. Here we are not dealing with what is particularly valued today – with the emphasis of the prosaic, the literal – but with the development of the rhythmic, the metrical, and even the melodious, textual, thematic element that underlies it as the truly artistic. In poetry, the literal can never be the essential, but only that which serves as a kind of ladder – the rhythmic, the musical, the metrical, the melodious, the thematic – to be strung together in the words, which are actually used only to form sounds and tones. This formal artistic element must be worked out in the recitation and declamation that accompany the eurythmy. Recently, attempts have been made to develop this recitation and declamation here in a way that recalls more artistic epochs than the present one. But what needs to be trained here today is often not only dismissed, but also insulted. Of course, we cannot be slowed down in the development of what must come again: a truly artistic recitation and declamation.

In declamation and recitation, all that is artistic must arise through formally artistic means, not through the kind of emphasis that people love today and that actually arose only from the inability to find real art in poetry. It is no wonder that a single chapter, I might say, of what must be cultivated here at the Goetheanum and what is cultivated with a purely artistic sense — at least in intention — is distorted and criticized in the world when one sees how otherwise everything that emanates from the Goetheanum in Dornach is worked against with untruth and dishonesty. . Only recently we had an example of this in the form of a report that a so-called sensational brochure about the Goetheanum was being prepared by a quarter from which dozens of lies have been issued in the past. We shall just have to listen expectantly to see whether those people, who have been amply proved that only lies come from that quarter, will now pounce on the new one with wild greed, which of course is also unknown to me. But the side that has only ever lied about the Goetheanum is very well known to me. As I said, when something like this happens on a large scale, it is no wonder that all sorts of things are said out of a lack of understanding or – as has happened recently – out of truly party-political, dishonest opposition to such specific aspects as the search for a real art of declamation and recitation.

That, for the moment, ladies and gentlemen, about the artistic aspect of eurythmy, which, however, has two other sides. I can only mention one of them briefly: that is the therapeutic and hygienic side of eurythmy. The movements that one encounters in eurythmy are drawn from the innermost laws of the human organism, just as language and song come from the laws of the speech organs. And it must be said that anyone who is familiar with the form of the speech organs can see in this form what can be communicated to people through singing and what can be communicated through artistically treated language in poetry. But in the same way, the human organism as a whole contains the potential for certain movements that can be derived from it. If these are faithfully derived from the human organism, they can also be transformed into movements that, because they are derived from human nature, have a therapeutic effect. These are different movements, transformed, metamorphosed movements, which appear on the therapeutic-hygienic side, in contrast to the artistic movements of eurythmy, which can be seen here. But basically they are based on the same source.

The third element in this eurythmy is the pedagogical-didactic element, which we have been applying for two years now at the Freie Waldorfschule founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which I run and where eurythmy is taught to the youngest and oldest schoolchildren as a compulsory subject alongside ordinary gymnastics - as a form of gymnastics that is inspired and spiritualized.

I have to keep saying: people will one day think more objectively about gymnastics than they do today; but it is not said by me, but I have to keep saying what one of the most famous physiologists of the present day said to me, who once heard what I said about it and who therefore told me afterwards: ordinary gymnastics should not be seen as something that, from a physiological point of view, point of view, but as a form of torture. Now, as I said, he was one of the most famous physiologists – I don't want to repeat what he said about gymnastics. It is reduced to a basis of what can be researched in a physiological way.

But what is illuminated, inspired and spiritualized in the child through eurythmy is felt by the child. And this is clearly evident in the Waldorf school as something that really comes from the most elementary core of human nature. The child feels truly at home in its element, because it not only experiences physical movement, but because the child's body, soul and spirit are truly emphasized as a unity. And it is no small thing that something is developed in the child that is now missing and will be increasingly missing in every following generation, something that can never be achieved in ordinary gymnastics: soul initiative, initiative of the will. This can only be judged by someone who sees how the child grows in its soul-bodily development from week to week, from month to month, from year to year. It is the case that the child actually develops its will initiative to a particular degree through this eurythmic gymnastics, whereby it is certainly not a one-sided soul or spiritual training that is meant. Rather, precisely because the whole, full human being is appealed to, the human being is furthered in his development through eurythmy as inspired gymnastics in body, soul and spirit.

Here in our presentation, you are now confronted with the artistic. But one may say that when Goethe, with his view of art, took the position: When nature begins to reveal its apparent secrets, as he says, he feels the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. In particular, if one does not use an external instrument, but uses a human being as an instrument – and all the secrets of the world are contained in the human being, the human being is a microcosm, that is not a phrase, it is a fact - and so we can say in response to this saying of Goethe: When man, as a higher nature, begins to reveal his inner secrets of growth and of creation, he feels a deep longing to create that which can arise out of himself!

And when Goethe says elsewhere: When man 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 a work of art, then one may also say: When man searches within himself, in his overall organization, for order, harmony, measure and meaning, in order to elevate them to a higher level, then himself, as the most worthy tool, something artistic will certainly arise.

What I always want to say at the end of each introduction to our performances – and so also today, dear audience – remains: We ask the esteemed audience to be lenient because what is already eurythmic art today is just only a beginning. We are our own harshest critics. But we also know that, given time, the germ of an idea will develop into something that can stand on its own as a fully-fledged art alongside its older sister art, eurythmy. It is more likely that others will do this than that we will.

The first part of the performance took place in the domed room of the Goetheanum, the second part in the provisional hall of the carpentry workshop.

1. Part (Goetheanumbau)

“Göttermahl” by C. F. Meyer with music by Leopold van der Pals
“L'Art et le Peuple“ by Victor Hugo
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (16) by Rudolf Steiner
“Meisenglück” by Friedrich Hebbel
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (17) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (18) by Rudolf Steiner
“La Priere du Mort“ by J. M. Heredia
“Prologue in Heaven” from “Faust I” by J. W. v. Goethe

II. Part (carpentry)

“The New Year” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Röve“ by Victor Hugo
“Open Table” by J. W. v. Goethe
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Prayer”; “The Lion”; “The E. P. V.”
“Valet“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Critic” by J. W. v. Goethe
“Among Magicians” by Christian Morgenstern

Dear Guests!

Allow me to begin with a few words, as I usually do before these eurythmy performances. This is not to defend or explain the artistic aspect, which would be, of course, something inartistic, and everything that aspires to be art must speak for itself, through its own impression. But what we are dealing with here in the art of eurythmy draws on artistic sources that have been unfamiliar until now and makes use of an equally unfamiliar artistic formal language. And a few words about these two, about the sources and about the formal language, may well be said so that what we are trying to develop here as eurythmy - which, however, is still more or less in the early stages of its development today - is not confused with something it does not want to be: dance or pantomime, facial expressions or the like.

What underlies this presentation, which occurs through the agency of the moving human being or groups of moving human beings, is a truly visible language, and specifically a language that, as such, emerges from the human organization just as regularly and fundamentally as spoken language or song. For it is possible to observe, through sensory-supersensory vision, the movements of the larynx and other speech organs of the human being when speaking or singing. These are not the movements that are performed last and then become air movements through which sound and tone are conveyed, but rather the movement tendencies that are held back at the moment of origin because it is not the movement that is to become visible, but the sound that is to arise. remain latent in the human organism when speaking or singing. The following can be said: in the human organism, there is, on the one hand, an element of imagination and, on the other, an element of will that seeks expression through speaking and also through singing. That which is imaginative struggles to free itself from the human cerebral organization. What is volitional in our speaking and singing comes from the whole nature of the human being, from the full human being.

Now everything that is mental, that is, conceptual, is unartistic. Man experiences the conceptual only through his soul when it is, as it were, intellectually assimilated inwardly. Thus something unartistic intrudes into the soul experience when the soul is confronted with the conceptual and has to wrestle with the unartistic element of the thought. This is always the case with the art of poetry. The poet always tries to go back as far as possible from the conceptual element to the volitional element that comes from the whole human being. This volitional element, which comes from the whole human being, is, as it were, what lies in the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs and what is, as it were, dulled by the conceptual element. The poet attempts to bring into his poetry the artistic element that underlies language in a deeper way by means of an inner eurhythmy of speech, by shaping speech, by means of the musical and phonetic, by means of formally shaped speech, by means of the rhythmic, by means of the musical, thematic element that he lays at the basis of speech and for which the literal content is only a ladder by which the artistic element can ascend. underlying artistic element in language into his poetry. What lives in the speech organs as, I would say, the hidden, full personality of the human being, can now be brought to revelation through the eurythmically visible language.

We proceed here from the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, which is the view that what is revealed in a single organ system of an organism is the same - only in a simpler way - as what is revealed through the whole organism. The individual plant leaf is, so to speak, in idea, a whole plant, only more simply formed for external sensory perception; and the whole plant is only a more complicated leaf. One can study the nature of the individual leaf in the whole plant. Thus, when this morphology, as conceived by Goethe, is artistically developed, what can be seen in the artistic in the supersensible can be transferred to the organs of movement of the whole human being, to arms and hands - which come into consideration because they are the most expressive parts of the whole human being - or to movements and postures of groups of people. In a truly visible way, one can express the same thing that the poet seeks to achieve by bringing the will element into the language. Then it must be emphasized again and again: the literal content is not the essential thing – that is only the prosaic. The essential thing is the musical-thematic, which underlies language, or the imaginative-pictorial, which underlies language, the pictorial. Especially in a pictorial language, what otherwise, I would like to say, only lies hidden in man, can be presented to the outward eye in a truly artistic sense. Therefore, anyone who has a real feeling for this expansion of artistic possibilities will be able to enjoy eurythmy and not fight it.

But it should be emphasized that poetry can be accompanied with this visible language as well as with music and singing. And what is actually poetic, the artistic, can be brought to the fore in a special way. When a poem is recited or declaimed and then performed in eurythmy, as you will see on stage here, we must go back to the actual artistic element of reciting and declaiming, because we live in an unartistic age in which the art of recitation and declamation has also become unartistic And this artistic element does not lie in what impotence seeks today, in the emphasis of the purely prosaic. If one prefers this emphasis on the purely prosaic, one will criticize what is being attempted here, as has indeed happened so often in recent times. However, in the case of the last campaign against the eurythmic art, this criticism has come not from any artistic background but from a rabble-rousing party background.

What is being sought here is a real return to the art of declamation and recitation, which cannot be based on emphasizing the prosodic structure, but must be based on the artistic, musical, thematic, rhythmic, and metrical shaping of the language treated by the poet, or on the imaginative and pictorial elements that underlie poetry which a poet like Goethe has based on, to the purely prosaic, in order to express the actual [poetic] of the poem. One can say that the actual essence of poetry never lies in the words and in what is to be conveyed in the words, but in the treatment of the thoughts, in the way the words or thoughts are formed. This can be particularly emphasized by the artistic presentation of eurythmy, but it must also come to the fore in declamation or recitation.

Today, in addition to the other performances, we will present the “Prologue in Heaven”, which precedes the dramatic presentation of Goethe's “Faust”, in eurythmy. It may be said on such an occasion that the eurythmic presentation proves particularly useful for the dramatic as well, if this drama - as is the case with Goethe's “Faust” in many places, for example in this “Prologue in Heaven” - distinguishes itself from the naturally outwardly obvious, when it rises to that which can only be given in the soul's view . When the spiritual experience is elevated to the supersensible, the naturalistic and intellectualistic aspects of the art of the stage are no longer sufficient; the presentation demands a different form.

For in the same measure in which these elements appear on the stage – the naturalistic and the intellectualistic do indeed belong together – in the same measure it becomes impossible to depict the supersensible. This is particularly evident in scenes such as the 'Prologue in Heaven' or other scenes in Goethe's 'Faust' that play in the supersensible, where there is this peculiar artistic stylization, this lifting of the content, the prosaic content, out of the naturalistic into an element where one can no longer be naturalistic because it has to be seen spiritually. That is what makes it possible to do justice to scenes that make these demands: to go out into the supersensible, so that it can also be grasped by the supersensible of the human soul. Therefore, I may believe that such poetry as “Faust” can only come into its own in eurythmic performance on the stage.

I have already said something about the artistic aspect of eurythmy. There are two other sides to this eurythmy: a therapeutic-hygienic one – there is also a form of eurythmy therapy that is now being developed, at least in its initial stages. Because eurythmic movement is an entirely channelled expression of the inner laws of the human organism, the mobility that it engenders in the human being, for example the movement of breathing, can also be used for therapeutic and hygienic purposes through the eurythmic element. I can only hint at this here.

A third element is the pedagogical-didactic one. We have introduced eurythmy as a compulsory subject in the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is headed by me. Children from the first year of primary school up to the highest year groups find that, because not only the physical body is set in motion as in ordinary gymnastics, but because every movement of the body is imbued with soul and spiritualized, as this soul-spiritual gymnastics - for that is what eurythmy is in a pedagogical-didactic sense - really puts the whole person in such an inner soul state that he feels in his element as a full human being. The child feels this, and that is why eurythmy is such a significant educational tool in so many different ways. I would just like to mention one thing: it is also an important [means of educating the will initiative], which can never be achieved through ordinary gymnastics, but which is so necessary for our generation and probably also for the following generations in the near future.

With regard to the artistic aspect, it may also be said that eurythmy is something that uses the human being as a tool. And if Goethe says on the one hand: “When nature begins to reveal its secrets to someone, they feel a deep longing for its most worthy interpreter, art,” on the other hand, we can say: “When the secrets of the highest naturalness, the secrets of human nature itself, are revealed to someone, they long to raise everything that lies in the human being as possibilities for movement and formation through his or her own organization into the realm of art.

On the other hand, when Goethe says: When man has reached the summit of nature, he perceives himself as complete nature, takes in harmony, order, measure and meaning, and finally rises to the production of the work of art, so one may say: This production of the work of art reaches a peak, so to speak, when man does not use external tools, but his own organism as a tool. This human organism is a small world, containing the laws of the universe in a concentrated form. If it seeks harmony, moderation and meaning in its sphere, in order to rise to the sphere of consciousness, something good must follow.

Even if one needs to ask the esteemed audience for indulgence, and I do so today, because eurythmy is only just beginning, one still knows what developmental possibilities lie in it and that one day - if not through us, but probably through others - it can be led to stages of development through which it can establish itself as a worthy supreme art alongside the older, fully entitled sister arts by making use of man himself as an artistic tool, by making use of what man can extract from his own organization, from this world in miniature.

The first part of the performance took place in the domed room of the Goetheanum, the second part in the provisional hall of the carpentry workshop.

1. Part (Goetheanumbau)

“Rosen aus dem Süden” by Friedrich Hebbel with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Liebeserklärung“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (19) by Rudolf Steiner
“Das Sträußchen” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (20) by Rudolf Steiner
“L'Art et le Peuple“ by Victor Hugo
“Prologue in Heaven” from “Faust I” by J. W. v. Goethe

Part II (carpentry)

Music by Leopold van der Pals. “Charon” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Minstrel“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Violet” by]. W. v. Goethe
“Papillons“ by Jean-Philippe Rameau
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorf with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresken by Christian Morgenstern: “Die Fingur”; “Der Purzelbaum”; “Zwei Esel”; “Der E. P. V.”; “Unter Schwarzkünstlern”

Dear attendees,

Allow me to introduce today's presentation with a few words, as I usually do for these eurythmy attempts. This is not done to explain the presentation itself – art must speak for itself in the immediate experience, and the explanation of art would itself be inartistic. However, in the case of these eurythmy attempts, we are dealing with an artistic activity that draws on previously unfamiliar artistic sources and that also makes use of an equally unfamiliar artistic formal language. And perhaps something can be said about these two, about this artistic source and about this artistic language of forms - all the more so because what is presented here can easily be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts, with the art of dance, with pantomime and facial expressions and the like, with which it should not be confused.

What you will see here on the stage, so to speak, is people in motion, groups of people in motion. And what is expressed in these human movements is a real, visible speaking. It is not the result of gestures being invented at random to express these or those feelings, these or those nervous processes and the like. It is not like that; rather, it is a real visible language that is drawn out of the human being, out of the human organization, in the same way that language, spoken language itself, is drawn out of this human organization.

Visible song, visible speech: that is what eurythmy seeks to be. And the fact that it can be that is based on the fact that, to use this Goethean expression, it was first carefully observed through sensual-supersensory looking at what actually underlies the movement tendencies in phonetic language, song, in the larynx. In the other speech organs, if I may express myself in this way, movements come to life that are captured in the moment of their creation, in their status nascens, and then transform into those movements that convey sound or tone as air movements. So it is not that which becomes real movement, but that which, in the moment of its arising, holds itself in order to become tone or sound, that must be captured by sensory-suprasensory observation. For this is essentially born out of the actual organization, the human organization of tone and sound. Just as language can express what lives within the human being, so this eurythmy, this visible language, can express the laws of both the poetic and musical arts.

We must only be clear about the fact that in the poetic arts, the actual artistic element is seated much deeper than one is accustomed to seeking in our present unartistic age. On the other hand, we must fully understand how that which is present in the shaping of speech in terms of rhythm, meter, melody, but also in terms of pictorial imagery, is that which the poet actually experiences in his soul. For in our ordinary language – and singing is only one more artistic [linguistic?] activity that has been developed towards musicality – all that the poet expresses in speech, but that which lives in our language, is actually composed of two elements: a thought element, which, as it were, flows out from the organism of the head into the tone-like of speech, and from a will element that comes from the whole human being.

The whole human being has become soulful, and from this soulfulness of the whole human being comes the will element. The more language advances in civilization, the less artistic it actually becomes. You can see it in the languages, if you have an eye for it, how they can become inartistic. Those languages in which the vowels e and i are increasingly preceded by consonants tend towards the inartistic. We must realize that the mental element flowing into speech is inartistic. Thought as such is always inartistic. Thought has a different essential element, a different mission in life, than directly expressing the human inner self in artistic forms, which is why the thought element advances in civilized languages. The element of prose comes to the fore inwardly everywhere and the artistic element recedes.

The poet then fights against the prosaic, and he tries to lead language back again, I would say, to a deeper level of experience, where the emotional-volitional can live out more fully in it. But this, what comes from the whole, from the full human being, this will in the expression of soul and spirit, can be brought out particularly through the visible language of eurythmy. Therefore, in poetry in particular, what is basically only hidden in the treatment of language, in the eurythmization of language, but which, when you strip it away, the conceptual, and this element of will in human, lawful movement, is shaped as it is in eurythmy, then you will be able to reveal from the poetic content what is contained in the actual artistic content, just as it is with musical content.

You will therefore hear the musical and the poetic at the same time as what is presented here as the eurythmization of the musical or the poetic. In this, it is important to bear in mind that recitation and declamation, which are supposed to accompany what is being performed in eurythmy, must in turn return to the times when the art of recitation and declamation was understood. Our age has become inartistic in this respect, also with regard to poetry. Today, few people are aware that Goethe himself, for example, did not rehearse his iambic tragedies with his actors based on their prosaic content. He did not just rehearse them, but rather, like a musical conductor, he rehearsed his Iphigenia with the actors, wanting to present and reproduce the speech formation. In the future, people will be just as insensitive to this as they are today. Schiller, just before he had the literal meaning of most of his poems in his soul, first had a kind of indeterminate melodiousness within him, a musicality, to which he then, so to speak, strung the words of his most important poems to create this linguistic form, this rhythmicization, this rhythmic treatment of language, to this treatment according to a kind of melodious thematic, to this treatment according to the pictorial, according to the imaginative, which is evident in the particular treatment of the sounds. Some sounds are broadened, others sharpened: in these expressions alone, by taking them literally, it is already expressed that the pictorial element can also come to life in language. This must be expressed in declamation and recitation. That is what is particularly opposed today, but only out of unartistic sentiment, out of pure dilettantism. Even if this kind of declamation and recitation has been fought against in recent times for quite different and dishonest reasons – I do not want to talk about these today – it is precisely out of quite [different declamation and recitation] that it must be shown how language also has within itself that which is then expressed through movements []. And these movements are not arbitrary, but are taken from the whole of the human organism through sensory and supersensory observation, and can be expressed in movement. In our eurythmy performances there is relatively little facial expression. Facial expression can of course only be expressed in a eurythmy performance to the extent that it can be expressed by an individual when speaking. In artistically shaped speech one would treat it in the same way as a forced facial expression when speaking, which would be a grimace, a caricature. And precisely because it has often been emphasized that the facial expression is missing, it shows how little sense one has of this particular linguistic element that lies in eurythmy. One also wants to look for the gestural element in it that can be interpreted from the moment. But just as the speech sound does not come to the soul content arbitrarily, but in a lawful way, so too what is formed in the eurythmic as movement does not come arbitrarily to the soul content. And a thought, a configuration, a sentence configuration, all this has a clear revelation in eurythmic expression, not something arbitrary. And the essential thing is that one does not seek what is actually to be expressed in the individual gestures either, but precisely in the sequence of movements, in the artistic shaping of the person, we have eurythmy. What is still inartistic, what still has to be artistically shaped, just as language itself in poetry: that is what we have to bear in mind.

I would also like to mention that today, in addition to the poems presented, we will also see something dramatic, the “Prologue in Heaven”, which precedes the first part of Goethe's “Faust”. There you can see how much the dramatic justifies eurythmy. I have not yet found it for myself, I am still working on it. If one wants to look for a new means of expression for the dramatic at all, as we already have it to a certain extent for the lyrical, for the epic, one only realizes how a truly artistic style comes to expression precisely in the search for a legitimate style. It is at most sought for naturalistic scenes. They must, after all, remain naturalistic scenes. I don't even want to say today how simple and superficial they will appear.

But what, like Goethe's “Prologue in Heaven” or other “Faust” scenes, carries the situation from earthly events up into the supermundane, where soul experiences that have a connection with supersensible worlds are to be portrayed, there one notices, especially with Goethe, with the true poet, how that which he cannot reveal, precisely because it descends into the purely naturalistic, ascends into the supersensible, how on the one hand it can only be truly stylistically presented [through eurythmy]. And one can hope that wherever the action in the drama rises to the level of spiritual experience, which goes beyond the purely naturalistic, eurythmic forms will be found everywhere, which in turn do justice to what is basically neglected if one wants to present it with today's merely technical means. I would also like to say that the presentation of Goethe's Faust scenes, such as the “Prologue in Heaven”, which is to be presented to you today, is something that is capable of significant perfection.

That is more or less what I would like to say in a few words, just about the artistic side. Another aspect of eurythmy is its pedagogical and didactic side. Here at the Goetheanum, of course, it is mainly the artistic side that is presented to you. As always, I would like to inform the esteemed audience that we are only just beginning with our eurythmy performances; we are our own strictest critics and know that it needs to be further developed. Those of our honored viewers who have seen our performances often will have noticed that we begin and end our eurythmic forms with silent forms before and after our performances. Wherever eurythmy is the only accompaniment, you will actually see how the mood of the poem can be introduced through such silent forms and how the mood can be sealed at the end through silent forms, after the poem has faded away. And how one can express the essential artistic element of the poem through this visible language, even when it is not accompanied by audible sounds, but is introduced or allowed to fade away merely through the visible language of eurythmy.

On the whole, it may well be said that when Goethe says: “He to whom nature reveals her manifest secret feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art, that one strives for this quite objectively with eurythmy. So that this saying of Goethe's can also be interpreted, with some modification, to mean: he to whom human nature and the soul reveal the revealed secret finds in himself a deep longing for that expression of the human form, for that remembering of the human form of the movements that arise from an inner, not an outer, lawfulness and art.

Elsewhere, Goethe says very beautifully: “By being placed at the summit of nature, man brings forth a summit within himself and ultimately rises to the production of the work of art.” If we know how the human being is again a true microcosm, in which what lives as the macrocosm, as the great world, is secreted, then what is scattered, I would say, throughout the world of space and the world of time, can be found again in the human being; if we truly feel and experience this world, then we can also say, with regard to what lives in microcosm of the human being, draws order, harmony, measure and meaning from his own essential qualities and forces, and draws measure, harmony and meaning from these qualities and forces and creates a work of art out of them, as in the art of eurythmy, then a real work of art must arise. And so we can have confidence that, if we look at what eurythmy wants, it will continue to develop, probably not through ourselves but through others, but by developing further and further, we can be sure that it will finally arrive at the point where it will be able to add itself as a fully-fledged younger art to the fully-fledged older ones.

Speech eurythmy has been developed up to a certain stage, and it may be said that we have achieved something in this domain. Until now tone eurythmy has only been developed in its very first elements, and due to a remarkable fact which has recently come to my notice, I have been led to give this short course of lectures. From various quarters it is strongly apparent that people have frequently found tone eurythmy more pleasing than speech eurythmy and comparatively easy to appreciate, whereas speech eurythmy has seemed much more alien to them. This sad fact, that more significance is attached to something still in its infancy than to something more fully developed, is really a proof that at the present time the understanding for eurythmy has not made much headway. It is of the utmost importance that this understanding should be fostered, and therefore I should like today to begin with certain introductory remarks which in the light of such understanding may enable you to work for eurythmy.

If we try to develop tone eurythmy out of eurythmy in the more general sense, the opportunity will arise of speaking about this understanding at least in an introductory way. It cannot be denied that on the part of eurythmists themselves, much can be done with a view to increasing a right understanding of eurythmy, for above all what is perceived by the onlooker must be borne in mind. The onlooker not only perceives the movement or gesture that is presented by the eurythmist, he also perceives what the eurythmist is feeling and inwardly experiencing. This makes it essential that the eurythmist actually experiences something while engaged in eurythmy, and especially that which is to be presented. In speech eurythmy this is the portrayal of the sound, and in tone eurythmy the portrayal of the musical sound.

So far [1915–24], with the exception of the forms [Note 1] which have been created for certain pieces of music, this portrayal of musical sound has consisted of nothing but the bare notes, nothing but mere scale [Note 2] If in speech eurythmy we had no more than we have today in tone eurythmy, this roughly would amount to the range of the vowels ah, a, ee, o, oo.

Just think how little we would have achieved artistically in speech eurythmy, if until now we had only been able to make use of the vowel sounds, ah, a, e, o, oo! But so far artistically we have actually had no more than this in tone eurythmy. This is why there is something depressing about the kind of judgements about tone eurythmy that reach us, which I have mentioned. And this is also why I believe it to be necessary that now we should at least begin to lay down the foundations of tone eurythmy.

It is necessary, above all, that in eurythmy we should get beyond the mere making of gestures and producing of movements, and that in the realm of tone eurythmy, and in speech eurythmy too, the actual sounds should be really felt. You must permit me to make this introduction, for in our speech today, and especially in our writing, we no longer have any conception of what a sound really is. This is because we no longer give the sound a name, but at the most briefly touch it.

We say ah. The Greek language was the last to say alpha. Go back to the Hebrew—aleph. The sound as such had a name then; the sound was something real. The further back we go in language, the more essentially real we find the sounds. When we name the first letter in the Greek alphabet, alpha, and trace back the significance of this word alpha (it is a word which really encompasses the sound), we find that even in the German language many words still exist closely related to what lies in the sound alpha or aleph—as, for instance, when we say Alp, Alpen—Alp, the Alps. And this leads us back to Alp-Elf, [the] Alp, [the] elf [but see Appendix 7. Translator's note], to a being in a state of constant activity, of becoming, of coming-into-being, of lively movement. The ah sound has completely lost all this because we no longer say alpha or aleph.

If the alpha or aleph is applied to the human being, then we can really experience the sound ah. And how do we experience ah? A snail could neither be an aleph, nor yet an alpha. But a fish could be an alpha, an aleph. Why? Because the fish has a spine, and because the spine is really the starting point for the development of such a being as an aleph. It is from the spine that those forces proceed which embrace an alpha-being.

Now try to understand that the spine is the point from which rays forth that which constitutes an alpha or aleph. Then you could roughly experience it by imagining that, as a human being, you could not receive much benefit from your spine [alone], if there were no ribs that go out from it, forming the body. If you then picture the ribs as detached and capable of movement, you get the arms. And then, if you consider it, you arrive at the eurythmic ah.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Now you must not think that anyone watching eurythmy sees only this forked angle; if this were so, instead of stretching out your arms you might just as well open out a pair of scissors, or the firetongs! You cannot do this, however, for the onlooker must have a human being before him. And the human being has really to feel the alpha, the aleph, inside. He has to feel that he is opening himself to the world. The world approaches him and he opens himself to it. How do you open yourself to the world? You open yourself to the world most purely when you stand before the world in wonder. All knowledge, said the Greeks, begins with wonder, with amazement. And when you stand before the world in wonder you break out with the sound ah.

When you have made the eurythmy movement for ah, you have brought your astral body into that position which is indicated by the angle formed by the stretched arms. But this gesture will not ring true if you have never tried to experience the feeling of this fork-like movement of the arms, as has already been mentioned in earlier instructions. Feeling must be in it. You actually have to feel that the sound ah is an abbreviation in the air, some sort of abstraction as opposed to the living reality which the human being experiences.

When, let us say, we encircle something with rounded arms, we encircle it with love. When we open ourselves in the form of an angle, we receive the world in wonder. And this mood of wonder is felt by the astral body (contained as it is within the physical body, within the whole human being). This mood of wonder must be felt in practising, once or even repeatedly, if the ah is to be true. The making of signs is not the essential thing, but the feeling that it cannot be otherwise (corresponding to a specific inner experience) than that the arms assume a forked angle as you stand confronting the world.

Let us pass on to the sound a. [Presenting this sound accurately] depends on being able to feel the a—which means holding yourself upright while facing something. In ah we open ourselves to the world in wonder; we let the world approach us. When we experience a we do not simply allow the world to approach us, but we offer some resistance; we confront the world. The world is there and we stand facing it. This is why the movement for a demands that we touch ourselves (crossed hands [in Austrian dialect die Hand can begin at the shoulder; consequently it can mean ‘arm’. Translator's note.]). We touch ourselves. We say, as we experience the a sound: ‘I too am here confronting the world’. And you will learn to understand the a when, in making the gesture, you feel: ‘I too am here confronting the world, and I want to feel that I too am here.’ The bringing of one limb into contact with the other awakens this feeling that I too am here.

Now I would have liked things to have developed so that first what we call the letters or sounds would have been given, and then the urge would have inwardly arisen to develop these experiences out of the letters themselves, for then you would get hold of it. And certainly this has frequently happened subconsciously with many people, though it is not always definitely apparent. But the study of eurythmy must proceed from such things as these, too.

Let us take o. In making the gesture for o, you form a circle with both arms. You must feel that while experiencing the o-gesture, you cannot experience a. With a you confirm your presence: I too am here confronting the world. With o you go out of yourself, enclosing something within yourself You embrace something. It is important in the a that that which you are addressing stays outside and you are inside, within yourself With o there is a kind of going to sleep while awake, in that you allow your whole being to go for a little walk into the space which you enclose with the o-gesture. But now that other thing you are addressing is also within this space. Thus, when experiencing the o, your feelings are such as these: I approach a tree; I embrace this tree with my arms, but I myself am the tree; [Note 3] I have become a tree-spirit, a tree-soul. There is the tree, and because I myself have become a tree-soul, because I have become one with the tree, I make this gesture. I go out of myself. That which is important for me is enclosed in my arms. This is the feeling of o.

The feeling of oo is that of being bound up with something, yet wishing to get away from it; following the movement you make and going somewhere else, leaving yourself and preparing your way. I run along my arms when I make the movement for oo. I am convinced of it, that in oo I stream away, away, away—away in this direction.

You see that this is speech. Speech poses questions. ‘How does the human being relate to the things of the world?’ Speech always asks: ‘How does the human being relate to the things of the world? Does the world fill him with wonder? Does he stand upright confronting the world? Does he embrace it? Does he flee before it?’ Speech is the relationship of the human being to the world. Music is the relationship of the human being, as a being of soul and spirit, to him- or herself.

When, in the way I have just indicated, you try to enter into what may be experienced in the vowel sound o, let us say, or oo, then you have a distinct going-out of the soul from the body. This is also expressed in the pronunciation. Think of the way in which the sound o is spoken, right forward on the lips and with the lips clearly rounded: o. Oo is spoken with the lips pushed somewhat outwards: oo = away. We have, then, in the gestures made in the air by speech, this going-out-of-ourselves in the sounds o and oo.

The musical element presents the exact opposite of speech. When you are going out of yourself in speech, the astral body and ego leave the etheric and physical bodies, even if this only occurs partially and imperceptibly. It really is a falling-asleep while still awake when we utter a or oo, or when we do a or oo in eurythmy. It is a falling asleep when awake. When you are going out of yourself in o or in oo, you really are going with your soul into the element of soul. And when I say that with the sounds o and oo I am going with my astral body out of my physical body, I am speaking in terms of speech.

When I say: ‘In what I am now experiencing I am going with my soul into my spiritual being’ (for in spite of the fact that I go out, I am entering into my spiritual being; just as when falling asleep I enter into my spiritual being too, while forsaking my physical body), this is just the opposite [of what happens in speech]. Thus when I say: ‘I am entering into my spiritual being in o or in oo, I am speaking in musical terms. [Note 4]

Now when I reflect upon the sound o or oo, I am naturally denying the musical element. But the point in question is: what is the musical experience in this going-out-of-ourselves of o and oo? What is it in music itself that corresponds to the out-going connected with o and oo? The musical experience which is contained in o and in oo is, in the most comprehensive sense, the experience of the major mood.

In speaking of the experience of the major mood, it is certainly true that we experience this in the sounds o and oo. I cannot say that we change our interpretation into an experience of speech, but we change the way we live in this experience. Whenever the sounds o or oo are uttered, or when a word is uttered in which either of these two sounds is predominant, then, underlying the speech, we musically experience the major mood.

When we reflect upon ah and a, where we may very clearly perceive the experience, underlying the sounds, of the astral body remaining within the physical body (indeed, we are here made particularly aware of the physical body), this produces a different musical experience. Pay attention, then, to this growing awareness of the physical body. When you speak the sound ah, or fashion it in eurythmy, you cause your astral body to sink down as much as it can into your physical body. This entails a feeling of well-being. It is as if you could feel your astral body flowing through your limbs like—I will say ‘sparkling wine’ for the less abstemious people, while for the more abstemious I ought perhaps to say lemonade’! Thus in uttering the sound ah you actually sense something like the flowing of some sparkling fluid through your physical body. What is the kind of feeling that now arises in the physical body? Ah—a feeling of comfort or well-being arises.

Let us take the other sound. You stand upright confronting your surroundings and say: ‘I too am here.’ Now it is as if, let's say, you were to shelter from the cold by means of a protecting garment. You increase the intensity of your own existence. This feeling of being aware of something outside yourself and defending yourself against it, this reliance on yourself in the face of some other element, lies in the sound a. In both cases, in ah and in a, the physical body is taken hold of by the astral body.

The same thing can be experienced musically, too. Musically this can occur in the experience of the minor mood in the most comprehensive sense. The minor mood is always a retreat into yourself with the soul and spirit part of your being; it is a laying hold of the bodily by the soul and spirit. You will most easily discover what is to be felt in the eurythmic gestures as the differentiation between the major and the minor moods when you draw the experience of the major out of the living experience of the sounds o and oo, and when you draw the experience of the minor, again with feeling, out of the experience of the sounds ah and a—not out of the sounds themselves, but out of the experience.

When you enter into these things you will feel how little people today know about the nature of the human being. It must be said that in our modern world the understanding for such things is remarkably limited. But without this understanding, absolutely nothing productive can be achieved in so many realms. Unless such understanding is acquired, we shall never be able to stand with our whole being within the realm of art. Something artistic which has not been permeated with the whole human being is nothing; it is a farce. Something artistic can only endure when the whole human being has poured himself into it.

But then we really have to feel the connection between the world and the human being; we must feel how speech brings us into a relationship with the outer world, and music into a relationship with ourselves; how, in consequence, all the movements of speech eurythmy are, as it were, drawn from the human being and transplanted into the outer world, whereas the gestures of music [eurythmy] have to flow back into the human being. Everything which goes out in speech eurythmy has to lead back into the human being in tone eurythmy. [Note 5]

Today, as you know, the whole world of thought is chaotically fragmented. There is no living picture of anything. Take a person of what we call a sanguine temperament, one who lives intensely in what is outside himself. A sanguine person pleases us, that is, he makes an agreeable impression upon us, only when he utters the sounds o and oo. We get quite a bitter taste in the mouth when anyone of sanguine temperament speaks the sounds ah and a; it doesn't quite work. But people today do not possess such vivid perceptions, and this is why contemporary people create so little from the depths of their being.

Now let us take a person of melancholic temperament. To anyone who has understanding for such things, a melancholic person seems to be an absolute caricature when he speaks the sounds o and oo. It only seems right when he speaks the sounds ah and a. Here we have the going over into the everlasting major mood of the sanguine person and into the everlasting minor mood of the melancholic person.

Now let us think of a person who is simply bursting with health, as we say. Such an overwhelmingly healthy person is in the major mood, and for the most part his astral body makes movements which correspond to o and oo. His step is light; that is to say, he lives in a continuous oo. He takes on everything, because it pleases him; he can endure anything. He is continually in the feeling of oo; he is the major mood incarnate.

Let us take a sick person. He is continually in a state in which, without the element of wonder, but through the very fact of his illness, he imitates the mood of ah or the mood of a—more especially the latter. A sick person is perpetually in the minor mood. And it is not exactly a metaphor or something of an analogy when we ask: What is fever? Fever is the sound ah transposed into the physical realm, which a eurythmist or someone who speaks the ah produces in the astral realm. The mood of the minor projected into the physical plane produces fever; it is the same process which takes place when you utter the sound ah, but in speaking this process takes place on a higher level—the level of soul and spirit. The sound ah is a fever. Either it is fever or it is tears, but it is always a process which the human being produces in himself.

These things lead to a true knowledge of the human being only when they are understood through the feelings. And because the human being is partially healthy and partially ill, the development of that which is superabundantly healthy (which must be inherent in art) and the development of movements imbued with the power of healing are closely interwoven. The latter exists in the case of ill people. This close relationship exists because, in reality, the major and the minor moods are, on a higher plane, the same as health and illness—that is to say, the experience of health and illness. Now we must not think that because the minor mood is [connected with] illness, it is therefore something bad or in some way inferior. Being ill in the soul-world always signifies something quite different from being ill in the physical world. From all this, you will see that the moods of major and minor, when developed eurythmically, may in time bring about therapeutic results.

So you see there is actually a bridge between speech eurythmy and music eurythmy. And when in speech eurythmy we experience the vowel sounds rightly, in the way I have described for ah and a on the one hand and for o and oo on the other hand, we really have something that leads us towards the experience of major and minor. But the important fact we could seriously bring home to ourselves is that we tend to push (schieben) the musical element more inwards, whereas the movements of speech eurythmy we have to push away (abschieben).

Imagine the following: Take a step forwards with the right foot, trying to feel this step as vividly as you can; do it in such a way that you also express in feeling the involvement of the head: you take a step forward (your head not too far back, but more forward). This is the first gesture. Now we carry out a second gesture. Try to accompany the gesture you have just made with a movement of the right hand, palm outwards, as much as possible in the direction of the foot taking the step. Now you have made a second gesture.

Take the first gesture: the stepping. Take the second: the movement. And now try to add a third gesture by making a light movement of the left arm, touching the right arm as if you wanted to push it away (left arm slightly pushing the right). You take a step forwards, following in the same direction with the right arm, and finally pushing the right arm with the left. Here you have a certain gesture in its most extreme form. You have the step and the movement, with what you add with the left arm bringing about a forming gesture—for when you follow on with the left arm, you arrest what you have poured into the movement in the right arm and hold fast the movement. We then have:

Step,
Movement,
Formation.

Here you are really involved in something threefold, and you are so much within this threefold occurrence that you will actually be able to feel this as a threefold occurrence. In the stepping you are in a position to discover an intimation of the outgoing of your astral body. In the following on of the movement, which you make with the right arm, this outgoing feeling is intensified. And in what I have described as the formation, you can feel how the movement is held fast.

Now if you really feel what I have indicated in this gesture, if you put yourselves into it, having no other wish than to enter with your whole being into this step, movement and formation, then you have something that is threefold. And you will easily realize that the step is the foundation of everything; it is the starting point. The movement is felt as the continuation, and must be in harmony with the foundation. And the formation establishes the whole process.

You must experience all this yourselves. You can experience it in the most varied ways if you take the notes into consideration; you can make the gesture in the upper, lower or middle zones. If you do it in such a way as to have C below, the E in the middle (thus beginning with the step, leading the movement over into E, and trying to confer the G in the formation) then in this step, movement and formation you have presented the major triad. Fashion the major triad quite naturally and objectively, and put the experience of the major triad into what you yourself present as a human being in the world. Just as in the gestures presenting the sounds of speech you have to feel the inner content of the sound, so here, in step, movement and formation, you have to experience the chord. This is a first element.

Step: C
Movement: E
Formation: G

Now let us try to step backwards with the left foot, allowing the head to follow [in the same direction]. And now try to follow this with the left arm. You must follow your backward step with the left arm, taking care to hold the palm of the hand inwards. Be really relaxed as you start. Make the backward step together with the movement of the head and arm (hand on the chest) trying to achieve completion by putting the right arm across. Try to hold fast this position. The whole gesture should be done in such a way that it can actually be seen how the left arm is led inwards towards the body, the left hand being brought to the body, and how the right hand is carried over towards the left hand as though to hold it fast [Hand is probably Austrian dialect for ‘arm’. Translator's note].

Here you have presented in the step:
C in the movement: Eb
and in the formation: G

You have presented the minor triad, and when you keep these gestures in view and have repeatedly tried to keep them in view, you will come to the conclusion that these basic elements of music, the major triad and the minor triad, can be presented in no other way. It is only when you have become convinced that there is absolutely no other way of expressing the matter that you will really have felt it. You may try as you like to find some other way of doing it; it is only when another method pleases you less than the gestures shown here that you can really be said to have realized what dwells in them.

Now you see, you have basically expressed in the realm of music what is expressed for the vowel sounds in speech eurythmy. If I ask you to produce an ah in speech eurythmy it is really the same (in speech eurythmy) as when I asked you just now to produce a major, or a minor, triad. It is simply doing vowels.

Now there is one thing which I have not yet characterized. I said that we can experience the major mood as such in o and oo, and the minor mood as such (which unlikely as it appears, is really the case) in ah and a, but I have not yet mentioned the fact that there can be something which lies between. Consider the transition. Try to experience the transition from the mood of wonder to the embracing feeling in the sound o, or, vice versa, the transition from the embracing feeling of o to the mood of wonder. Here you go from without inwards; you pass from the ‘going out’ of the astral body to a ‘diving down’ of the astral body. Here you pass from illness to health, from health to illness. This is the ee. Ee is always the neutral feeling of yourself between the experience of going outwards and the experience of being within—both in relation to the physical body. Thus ee stands between ah and a on the one side, and o and oo on the other side.

And now try (you can think these things over before tomorrow and apply them for yourselves) to pass over from the experience of minor to the experience of major by simply changing [direction]. You first produce the experience of the minor, then you change it by placing yourself forward. Simply incline the head somewhat forward (in the minor experience it lies in a backward direction), and incline yourself forward, thereby changing the whole movement of the muscles. Instead of the step backwards with the left leg, you would now have to step forwards with the right leg; you simply bring that which you have in front out of the minor into the major; that is to say, you pass out of the major into the minor mood, or out of the minor into the major mood. The experience underlying this transition corresponds to the experience of ee in speech eurythmy. You will already sense the interesting variety of life underlying this transition from the major to the minor mood if you really carry out what I have just indicated.

You see, the point is this. When we initially enter into the nuances which lie in the major and the minor moods and the transition between them, we are really entering into what, in the realm of music, corresponds to the vowel sounds. You must take deeply into your soul this first principle, as I have described it. The gestures you have made for the major and the minor moods and the transition from the one to the other are the musical way of doing the vowels. The starting point is taken from the major and the minor moods.

The musical realm carries the fundamental moods corresponding to the vowels throughout its entire tonal configuration, through tension, resolution, and so on. [Note 6] And just as we can pass over from the spoken vowel sounds into words, so we may also pass over from the understanding of the elements of music (as, for instance, the simple chordal nature of the major and minor triads) into eurythmic understanding of the musical realm, the inner musical configurations.

Tomorrow at this time we shall continue.

Gesture which is to be used for the expression of music must be gesture rising out of actual experience, and this can only be an experienced gesture if the underlying experience is there first.

You will understand this if you once more place before your soul the origin of music and speech in the human being. [7] Music and language, that is to say, the sounds of music and of speech, are connected with the whole human being. When the human being sings or speaks, the experience of the singing or speaking is in the astral body and ego.

Now everything that lives in the astral body and ego has its physical manifestation in air and warmth. Let us suppose that someone is singing or speaking. Imagine to yourselves as vividly as possible how the sound-formation of speech or music comes about. The formations of speech and music live purely as soul-element in the astral body and ego. Along with the astral body and ego they are then imparted to the air, to the organs of breathing and everything connected with them; they are imparted to the air and the organs of breathing by and through the astral body.

But you know that when any body, [like] a volume of air, is compressed, it becomes warmer. It becomes inwardly warmer. Compression causes an increase of inner warmth. When such a body expands, it uses this warmth again in the process of expansion. In the oscillating air, that is to say, in the alternation between condensed and rarefied air, there are continual fluctuations of temperature: warm, cold; warm, cold; warm, cold.

Thus there enters into the stream of singing or speaking the element of warmth. The ego lives in this element of warmth, and singing and speech gain their inwardness through this. Musical sound and the sounds of speech actually acquire their inner quality of soul from the warmth that, as it were, is carried on the waves of this air (which form the sound purely outwardly); warmth is carried on the actual flowing waves of the air. The astral body is active in the flowing air itself, and the ego lives in the warmth which flows on the waves of the air. But the astral body and ego are not only present in the air and warmth, they are also present in the fluid and solid elements of the human body. When a human being speaks or sings, the astral body and ego are partially withdrawn from there, and limit themselves to the air and warmth. Singing and speaking do in fact entail a withdrawal of the astral body and ego from the structure of the human body, but not completely, as in sleep. This is a partial withdrawal from the solid and fluid elements of the human body, which then remain behind. From this you will see that when someone speaks or sings, something takes place in his whole body.

We will now try to become aware of how the human being perceives what is taking place here. We know that the sounds of speech and of singing are activated by the larynx and all that is connected with it. The human being perceives by means of the ear. Here we have two organs clearly placed at the periphery of the body. Feeling is poured into these organs. In the senses there is the actual active feeling, active feeling of the soul. We feel with the eye; we feel with the ear. But it is also feeling which stimulates activity in the larynx and its neighbouring organs. Feeling is at work here. The imagination (Vorstellung) is merely pushed into the feeling. It is feeling which is at work. The human being, as it were, is specialized in the organs connected with hearing, speech and singing when he sings or takes in what is sung, or speaks or takes in what is spoken. Hence the actual experiences remain in the ear and larynx, and do not really enter into consciousness. [8]

Everything that can be laid hold of by the senses, and everything that can be expressed through the organs of speech, can also be expressed by the entire body, by the entire human being. In the movements of eurythmy, the whole human being becomes a sense-organ. The whole range of feeling, as it streams and strongly pulsates through the body, becomes incitement and an organ of perception—the whole range of feeling with the human being as the instrument. And so what otherwise remains an experience of the ear or larynx only, now has to become an experience of the whole human being. When it becomes an experience of the whole human being, it quite naturally becomes gesture. Once the experience is understood, is laid hold of, then the experience becomes gesture. Let us make this clear with a few examples. Think of a musical sound as such, and in order to have a starting point, take any note as keynote.

The connection of the sound with feeling will become clear to you when you recall that the animal (which is of a lower order than man) breaks forth into sound as the result of a sensation of well-being, of pleasure, or of some sort of pain. Now pleasure, comfort and pain are experiences of feeling. Ultimately every sound uttered by the human being originates from some such basic source. When the human being experiences pleasure or well-being, he feels impelled to utter sounds. Why? Why does the human being utter sound? You might say he could also remain silent. Why does the human being break out into sound when he is overcome with delight?

What does a feeling of pleasure imply? To be overcome with pleasure really means that we lose ourselves in our surroundings. Everything which induces pleasure means that the human being is losing himself. And everything painful means an excessive awareness of himself. You are aware of yourself too strongly when you are in pain. Just think how much more aware of yourself you are when you are ill, or experience some kind of pain, than you are when the whole body is free from pain. When we are in pain we are too strongly within ourselves, and we are excessively aware of ourselves. In pleasure, on the other hand, we nearly, or even utterly, are losing ourselves. Harmonious feeling is brought about by the balance between pleasure and pain, by giving ourselves up entirely to neither the pleasure nor the pain.

Why does the human being give vent to sound when experiencing pleasure, pain, or any other nuance of feeling—each of which in the last resort leads back either to pleasure or pain? Why does he produce sound? He does so in order to keep a hold on himself when he is at the point of losing himself in pleasure. The sound enables him to keep hold of himself; otherwise in this pleasure his astral body with his ego would leave him. By giving vent to sound he is able to keep hold of himself. This is at the root of all phenomena in which sound is produced by a living being. (For instance, the moon works very strongly upon certain creatures, such as dogs. It threatens to tear away a dog's astral body. And the dog barks at the moon because by this means it anchors its astral body.)

When the human being gives vent to sound for itself (and any note may be regarded as the keynote) it means that he is resisting this tendency to lose himself in pleasure. He is holding fast to his astral body.

And when the ego and astral body sink down into pain, then, because the human being is too intensely aware of himself, he quite rightly tries to tear himself away from himself by the utterance of some note or sound. In the plaintive sound of the minor mood there is an effort to tear free from an excessive awareness of self.

When we think of it, by saying this we are already speaking in gesture. There is not the least need to interpret anything artificially, because we speak in gesture. We need only to understand what occurs here, and we speak in gesture. If I say: ‘I have sunk too deeply into myself and must tear myself out of myself- then indeed it is beyond doubt that some sort of gesture which proceeds from me is a natural gesture, and is the actual expression of what I experience. It expresses what the experience is. And so the understanding of such an experience already indicates the gesture. You cannot do otherwise when describing the experience than to describe the gesture. For this reason the movements of eurythmy are not arbitrary, but actually reveal what is experienced.

Now let us suppose that someone, either in pleasure or pain, has produced a sound which we will regard as the keynote. The underlying mood is unfinished; it cannot stay like that, for if it did, the person in question would be constantly obliged to sing the keynote or to utter a sound. When experiencing pleasure he would never be able to cease uttering this sound; he would have to sustain it forever if the sound itself did not exert a certain calming influence. The human being cries out into the world as a result of pleasure or pain, and here is an incomplete condition of human experience, an unfinished condition of soul for human experience.

Let us now take the transition from keynote to octave. In the transition from keynote to octave, the octave simply falls into the keynote. It is as if you stretched out your hand and came into contact with an object. Through this external touch the longing you felt for something outside yourself is satisfied. In the same way the octave comes to meet you from the world in order to calm the prime within itself. That which was unfinished to begin with is now complete. When the octave is added to the prime, a wholeness is created again. In the course of these lectures you will see how the gestures come about by themselves if we penetrate to a true understanding of the underlying experience. [9]

Let us consider [the interval of] the fifth—the fifth which is united in some way to the keynote. It is essential here truly to acquire the experience of the fifth. The remarkable thing about the fifth is that when the human being holds the keynote and the interval of the fifth from it, he feels he is a completed human being. The fifth is the human being.

Naturally such things can only be expressed in the language of feeling—nevertheless, [we can say] the fifth is the human being. It is exactly as if the human being inwardly extended as far as his skin, as if he laid hold of his own skin and enclosed himself off within it. The fifth is the skin as it encloses the human being. And never, in the realm of musical sounds, can the human being feel his humanity so strongly as he does when he is experiencing the fifth in relation to the keynote. What I have just said may be more intelligible in the following considerations.

Let us now compare the experience of the fifth with that of the seventh and the third. The experience of the seventh (sounding either harmonically or melodically) involves those sounds which were especially favoured in the world of ancient Atlantis; it was the interval that gave them special delight. [10] Why was this? It was because in the epoch of ancient Atlantis, people's experience of going outside themselves was still a positive one. In the seventh we really do go out of ourselves. In the fifth we go as far as the skin; in the seventh we are outside ourselves. We leave ourselves in the seventh. Indeed in the seventh as such there is absolutely nothing soothing. It might be said that when a person cries out in the keynote because he is being hurt, and then adds the seventh to it, he is really crying out about the crying, in order to escape from it again. He is quite outside himself. Whereas the fifth is experienced at the surface of the skin, and the human being feels his humanity, in the seventh there is the feeling of breaking through the skin and going into his surroundings. He goes out of himself; he feels he is in his surroundings.

In the third there is a distinct feeling of not reaching as far as the skin, but of remaining within yourself. The experience of the third is very intimate. You know that what you settle with the third you settle with yourself alone. Just try out how unfamiliar the experience of the fifth is compared to the experience of the third. The feeling of the third is an intimate one which you settle with yourself in your heart. In the fifth you feel that other people too can see what you experience, because you go as far as the skin. It is only by means of feeling that such things can be experienced. And in the experience of the seventh you are outside yourself.

And now recollect what I said yesterday. The gesture which characterizes the keynote is the step. This step gives us the position. The third is characterized either by an accompanying or a following gesture of one arm, indicating an entering into movement, while following in the direction of this gesture. The direction of the gesture is followed in such a way that if it is the major third, you still remain within your arm. You remain within it. I have characterized the fifth as something that you form. You return, just as the skin forms the human being on all sides. In the triad, regardless of whether it is major or minor, we have:

Inner activity: the step
Remaining within yourself: the movement
Closing off what is outside: the formation

Now the point is this: When trying to give clear expression to the remaining-within-yourself in the third, it is possible to vary the movement. In order to introduce some variety, you might, for instance, stretch out your arm and, while continuing the direction of the gesture, move in some way such as this (right arm stretched out, the hand moving up and down). Now you are within yourself. Thus the interval of the third is well expressed when you first take up the position, and then make the movement—continuing, however, to move within the movement. Now you have inwardness.

Suppose that you are dealing with a major third. Then you will show inwardness by making the arm movement go away (out) from yourself. If you express the minor third, you remain more within yourself, which you indicate with your arm back towards yourself (inwards). You have a gesture that really expresses the experience of the third. [11]

If you want to experience these things you must repeatedly practise the corresponding gesture and try to see how the experiences of the intervals actually flow from the gesture, and how they are within it. Then the corresponding experience will grow together with the gesture, and you will possess that which makes the matter artistic. The experience will grow with the gesture. Only then will the matter become artistic.

In the experience of the seventh this is especially apparent. With the seventh, the essential thing is that you go out of yourself, for it is a going-out-of-yourself. Somehow the gesture has to show that you go out of yourself (you stretch out the arm, turning the hand while shaking it). The natural expression of the seventh is a movement which you do not follow, but in which the hand is allowed to be shaken. And when you compare the experience of the fifth with that of the seventh, you will feel in the fifth the necessity of closing off, of giving it form, of making so to speak an enclosing movement. This is not possible in the experience of the seventh, for in the seventh it is as if your skin disappears while experiencing the seventh, and you stand there as a sort of flayed Marsyas. [12] The skin flies away and the whole soul goes out into the surroundings. If you want to introduce the other arm as well into the movement to support the seventh experience, you can do so, of course, for there is never a question of pedantry or retaining something schematic. In such a case you would have somehow to indicate the seventh with the other hand. Of course this must be beautifully done.

Thereby you will experience, when you enter deeply into the matter in this way, that the experience itself becomes gesture. And eurythmy will only prosper when the experience itself becomes gesture.

A eurythmist must become in some respects a new human being compared to what he or she was before, because in general, through the fact that we speak or sing, we have brought about a certain attentiveness to what we actually want in the gesture. We lead over what we want in gesture into speech and song. When we retrieve it, gesture arises. And a professional eurythmist (if I may use such a philistine expression)* has to feel it absolutely natural to translate everything into gesture. Indeed, when mixing in ordinary, polite society, a eurythmist cannot help feeling a sense of restraint and restriction at not being able to eurythmize all sorts of things in front of people. Isn't it true, that just as the painter itches to paint when he sees something and is unable to (for he would like to paint everything but cannot always be at it, and thus has to restrain himself), so too a tired eurythmist is actually something terrible? A eurythmist cannot manifest fatigue as something natural. It is really dreadful to see a eurythmist sitting down tired during a rehearsal, for it is exactly (isn't it?) as if someone suddenly became rigid or got paralysed. I have sometimes observed in eurythmy rehearsals that eurythmists sit down when there is a little pause. Such things do not, I believe, happen in Dornach, but here and there it does occur. I probably turn quite pale, for my blood runs cold at this quite impossible sight of a tired eurythmist. There is no such thing! In life, of course, there is such a thing, that is the paradox, but you must sense that this is so. So I do not say you must not sit down if you are tired, but I do say: If you do, you must regard yourself as a caricature of a eurythmist!

These things must be said in order that the fundamental mood of the artistic process may be brought into the matter, for art has to be based upon the mood, upon that which runs through everything like a connecting thread. And especially such an art as eurythmy, where the whole human being is involved, can never prosper if this mood is lacking, if this mood does not permeate everything.

When these things have become real experiences, you will simply and truly feel eurythmy as you do speaking and singing. You must accustom yourselves, however, just as you experience the sounds of language, to experience singing too for the activity of eurythmy. It is quite true to say that the eurythmist must experience the musical element in a fuller sense than, for instance, a singer does. With a singer it depends upon his entering right into the musical sound, taking hold of it, being able to hear it, and living in an element in which his body comes to his assistance to a marked degree. The body does not come to the assistance of the eurythmist; for in eurythmy it is the soul which must engage in the gesture what the senses or larynx have to do in singing and speaking.

It is necessary to preface the description of the actual movements by this somewhat lengthy introduction, for these things are especially important for the whole feeling of the eurythmic element. The eurythmic element will not be understood if such things are not entered into with intensity. An understanding must be acquired by the eurythmist for all that I have stressed when giving introductions to performances, but which in the present time is rarely correctly understood. I often say that the prose content of the words do not make for the poetical element, the artistic and poetic element. There are people today who read a poem as though it were prose. You do not have the poem there. The prose content does not constitute the poem. The poem is what lives in the musical, sculptural and pictorial element of the words, in their melodic motifs, rhythm and beat, and so on. Anyone who wishes to express what should be expressed in poetical form, must be vividly aware that the words must not be used merely on account of their meaning, but arranged according to the beat, the rhythm, the melodic motifs, or that which is pictorial in the formation of the sounds, and similar things.

We have, consequently, to go one stage beyond the mere content of language, for in so far as its actual content is concerned, language is inartistic. It exists for prose. This is the inartistic element in language. Not until language is fashioned, not until it is given shape and form, does it become artistic.

What has been said here about language is quite obvious for singing, of course. We can see that our age does not care much for real artistic creation, for it happens that modern music [1924] too exhibits the tendency that does not allow the actual music, the progression of notes, to speak for itself, but tries to express something quite different by this means.

Now you must not misunderstand me, for it is not my intention to make any anti-Wagnerian propaganda. Time and again I have emphasized Wagner's significance in the culture of our age. This, however, is not because I regard his music as being ‘musical music’, but rather because we have to admit the demand of the present age for ‘unmusical music’. It is apparent to me that unmusical music has its justification in our age. Fundamentally speaking, Wagner's music is unmusical. [13] And it is really necessary in an age like ours, when music should also become gesture, to point the way to musical experience as such, when musical experience is to be expressed in gesture, and to show how the interval of the third represents inwardness, and the fifth a boundary, the seventh a going-out-of-yourself. And what is it that gives the feeling of inner satisfaction in the octave? The inner satisfaction in the octave is due to the fact that here, I would like to say, we get away from the danger inherent in the seventh. We escape from this danger inherent in the seventh and re-find ourselves outside.

With the octave it is like this, as if—with the seventh—you had become a flayed Marsyas, without your skin, the soul departing, the skin flying off and is getting away; but now you feel in the octave: ‘I am stripped of my skin, but it is coming, returning, I'll have it in a moment, it is about to return, it is there approaching and yet it is still outside.’ You have indeed grown somewhat, you have expanded and become fuller. It is as though you grow while experiencing the octave.

Obviously, then, the movement for the experience of the octave is not the same as that for experiencing the seventh. The experience is attained by turning round the whole hand outside yourself. The interval of the octave is expressed by turning the hand, starting with the palm facing outwards. If you wish to give full expression to the octave, you can of course make the same movement in this way too (in the same way, but carried out with both arms and hands). Here again it is self-evident that these things must be practised so well that they become second nature. Just as the musician has to get the producing of the notes into his fingers, so the eurythmist must get the corresponding gestures into his or her whole body.

This is why it is so necessary for the basic elements of eurythmy to be repeatedly practised. Such elementary movements as those I have briefly indicated (and shall develop further in the course of the next few days) must become second nature so it is no longer necessary to think about them, any more than it is necessary to think about the letters of a word that is spoken. If we say the word ‘letter’ we do not need to think, for we know quite well how its component sounds have to be pronounced. And so we have to reach the point where the movements for the intervals, triads, and so on, are produced out of ourselves quite naturally. You will then see how easily the other things arise. And above all you will increasingly realize how the experience passes over into gesture.

In order to understand this, let us deal with the difference between concords and discords. As you know, triads are concordant or discordant; a four-note chord is actually always discordant.

You will have realized yesterday from the movements for the triads, that in order to give expression to the experiences of the triad, the assistance of the whole human being must be invoked. In the first place we have what I characterized as the step. The step essentially entails the use of one leg. Then, with both major and minor chords, we have the movement with one arm, and the forming with the other. You may say: ‘I have nothing else to use.’ Well, as you do have two legs, you have a means of expressing a chord of four notes. And now you may say: I really cannot step forwards with one leg and backward with the other, simultaneously. And yet you can do this if you jump. You see, we arrive at this quite naturally.

There is no other means of presenting a four-note chord than by jumping somewhat, moving one leg forwards and the other backwards. This is how a four-note chord is presented. But think for a moment what happens here. It would be difficult, as well as not looking particularly beautiful, to jump without bending the knees. You cannot jump easily with totally stiff legs, quite apart from the ungraceful appearance. In jumping you must bend at the knees, so that in the jumping movement necessary for the four-note discord (because of the nature of the body and its relation to the environment) you really get the bending of the knees as the gesture for the discord. The natural movement for a discord is the bending of the knees entailed by jumping.

From this, however, something else arises. If you have a discordant triad you can again apply the same principle. With a concordant triad you take a step forwards; with a discordant triad you must also make a bending movement. There is no necessity to bend as with jumping, but you can bend. And so you express the discordant triad by moving with bended knees. You can discover this from the fact that a four-note chord (which is always a discord) can only be done by a jump in order to set both legs into movement; for you just do not have four members of your body in order to express a discord of four notes, so you have to jump, coupled with bending. This gives us, therefore, bending as the expression of the discord.

Now just as a musician has to practise his exercises, a tremendous inner liveliness is attained by practising the alternation between discords and concords, passing from one to the other simply with a view to experiencing in their gestures the change of mood, the change in the actual feeling.

If you think of all I have just said, you will find the experience of the fourth of particular interest. In the third we are intimately within ourselves. In the fifth we come just to the boundary of the body. The fourth lies between. And the fourth has this striking characteristic, that here the human being experiences himself inwardly, although not so intimately as in the third. But he does not even reach his surface. He experiences himself beneath this surface. He remains, as it were, just beneath it. He separates himself from the surrounding world, and creates himself within himself. He does not form himself, as in the fifth, where the external world also compels this forming, but he forms himself out of the needs of his own soul. The experience of the fourth is such that the human being feels his humanity through his own inner strength, whereas in the fifth it is through the world that he feels his humanity. In the fourth he says to himself ‘You are really too big; you cannot experience yourself because you are so big. Make yourself a little smaller, yet stay as important as your size.’ In the fourth you make yourself into a snug, comfortable dwarf Thus the fourth demands a very strong relation to yourself. You can achieve this when, instead of simply going outwards or inwards as in the third, you draw the fingers sharply together as if to concentrate the strength of the hand in itself In this way the fourth is expressed and revealed.

These, then, are the principles which have to be considered before entering more deeply into the gestures of the musical element, for without the experience of these principles no truly artistic gestures can come about. I am sure you will have plenty to do when you come to work through all these details. It is better therefore not to give too many gestures in one session, for what has been given must first be assimilated. So we shall continue tomorrow.

#160;

Notes:

1. It has a bourgeois ring in German. Translator's note.

Let us first see if you can manage the following exercise. With the right arm, try to make a movement similar to the one I gave for the forming of the seventh; now try to hold the arm still whilst stepping forwards, so that the arm remains stationary, the body following the direction of the arm. To do this you must bend your arm as you step. The arm, the hand that is, must remain in the same place while you step forwards. This exercise must be carried out in such a way that the arm, the hand, remains where it is, while you come up and join it. This must be practised.

Now try another exercise: While stepping forwards try to draw the hand back somewhat—not too strongly, however. Now we have two exercises. Try to experience in succession seventh and prime, and sixth and prime. The first movement just shown expresses the succession of notes: seventh—prime; and the second movement for the experience sixth—prime; the sound [of each interval] imagined in succession. They can, however, also be imagined simultaneously; I will speak about this a little later on. In this way you are able to bring movement into the gesture.

The movement first shown is one which, in a certain way, throws life back into the lifeless. And indeed, as may be seen from yesterday's description of the seventh, this is also the case in regard to its relationship to the keynote. If you picture the keynote as the embodiment of calmness and quiet, and the seventh as actually lying outside the physical body, so that in the seventh the human being goes out of himself, then it will be possible for you to imagine that by your going out, the seventh brings back the spiritual quickening element into the resting, bodily part.

You see, these things become vividly real when we pass over from the musical element to the eurythmical element. Music naturally is something perceived, as it is produced in the first place in order to be heard, whereas eurythmy brings the whole human being into movement. And you will best recognize the inner reality of what has just been said about the relationship of the seventh to the keynote, from the fact that this can be therapeutically effective. When for instance a hardening process in the lungs or some other organ in the chest is diagnosed, it will be found that this very exercise, as it has now been demonstrated, will have a healing, re-vitalizing effect, helping to bring the condition back to normal.

It is precisely tone eurythmy in all its elements, when suitably carried out, which is a factor in eurythmy therapy. Only it is necessary to penetrate into the nature of the musical sounds in a really living way, as we endeavoured to do yesterday, and as we shall try to continue.

In this connection let me also say the following. If, in a similar way to that which I have just indicated, you go on from the seventh to the sixth in relation to the keynote, you will find in this interval a noticeably weakened relationship, and it is strikingly characteristic that the hand, which is held stationary from outside in the case of the seventh, here goes backwards. This does not express the relation of the living to the lifeless, but the sixth in relation to the keynote is so expressed that you feel it merely as motion, as a setting into activity. It may be compared to a stimulation of feeling rather than to something which imparts life. The sixth in relation to the keynote induces a picture of feeling. The seventh in relation to the keynote induces a picture of life; it imparts life to the lifeless.

And now, bearing in mind these gestures (which will have shown you that in its essential being, tone eurythmy must be movement), I will ask you to consider how tone eurythmy, just as speech eurythmy, may after all provide a correcting influence upon art as a whole.

It was necessary to tell you that speech eurythmy has a corrective artistic influence upon recitation and declamation. In introductions to public performances, for instance, it is difficult to make use of the necessary drastic expressions which are demanded if we are to describe the inartistic nature of our modern age, for people would only be shocked, and very little would be gained. Things have to be put mildly, as indeed I try to do. But the truth of the matter is that in our inartistic age, recitation and declamation have become completely degenerate. The laws of true art are no longer observed in recitation and declamation. Everything is read like prose in a thoroughly materialistic way. People think it must be felt out of the gut instinctively; emphasis is determined by pathos, or something of the sort, indeed by anything that makes an appeal to sensation or sense-impression. Now true recitation and declamation must be based upon the forming and shaping of the actual language, upon making speech musical, and upon a sculptural, pictorial treatment of speech. And when on the one hand we have a eurythmy performance, and on the other hand recitation, then it is not possible to make use of recitation and declamation in their present degenerate state. Attention must be paid to speech.formation. I always describe this as a ‘hidden eurythmy’, for eurythmy is indicated in recitation and declamation. Attention must be paid to the shaping and forming of speech. In such a way eurythmy can also exert a corrective influence upon everything that is musical.

We are actually living (this is naturally still more shocking) in a terribly inartistic age where music is concerned, too. This cannot be denied—we are living in a terribly inartistic age. For today there is an exceedingly widespread tendency to drive music as such into mere noise. [14] We have gradually ceased to be musical in the real sense, and instead we now make use of music in order to portray all sorts of sounds which are meant to represent something or other; the listener cannot always be sure what actually is intended, but at any rate it is a question of portraying something or other. Now please do not regard me as one of those Philistines who are only out to denegrate all that is being produced today in the sphere of music—doubtless with the most honest intentions! But it is necessary, when dealing with an art such as eurythmy, to raise it upon the foundations of what is really artistic, and to be able to speak about such things radically, too. It is impossible to do otherwise. Thus it is easy to see how eurythmy can work correctively upon musical taste.

You must forgive me if I now introduce something in the nature of an exercise; I have to do so in order to show how something can be built out of the fundamentals of art. Try first of all to become inwardly completely quiet, indifferent to sense impressions, as well as to any inward passions. Having achieved this state of indifference, sit down at the piano and play one of the middle notes (any note will do) and try while going up the scale to the octave really to experience the progression of notes. [15]

Having experienced this in peace and quiet, stand up and try to realize in eurythmy gestures what you have experienced. You will arrive at much, both in regard to what I have already mentioned and to those things about which I have still to speak. Endeavour, when attempting to reproduce in gesture what you have just played (single notes in an ascending progression) to bring into the eurythmy gestures (into the gestures for the triad, for instance) something similar to the gestures we have been discussing during these last few days. You will find it comparatively easy to feel a very strong connection between what you produce, feel and experience as gesture, and the notes as you play them successively on the piano.

Try striking a chord and try to reproduce in eurythmy the harmony of the notes. You will now discover that something within you does not want to go along with this. When striking a chord you are faced with the problem of having to carry out the step and movements of both arms simultaneously, as I indicated, let's say, for the movements for the major triad. You are impelled to do this, but it will certainly arouse in you a feeling of inner opposition. A certain tendency will become apparent in your soul to transform the chordal, harmonic element into the melodic element, to transform the notes sounding simultaneously into a progression. And you will only feel really satisfied when, as it were, you release the chord, when you actually lead it over into Melos, making three movements for the three notes, one after the other.

It may be plainly stated as a law that eurythmy actually compels us to release continually the harmonic element into Melos. This is the corrective element about which I now want to speak. When you feel this in the right way you will come to the conclusion that, drastic as it sounds, the chord is really a burial. The chord may be likened to a burial. The three notes which are played together, and which are thus dependent upon space and not upon time—these notes have died in the chord. They only live when they appear as melody. When you really feel this you will discover the actual musical element is only to be found in the melodic element, the effect of the notes living in time.

You will then realize how senseless it is to ask: ‘What do the notes express?’ Today people have gone so far in this direction that they try to make music represent the rippling of water, the sighing of the wind, the rustling of leaves, and all sorts of things. This, of course, is really apalling. Naturally, it is not my intention to campaign against this kind of thing, nor to detract from the pleasure anyone may take in it; I am only concerned that we correctly understand the matter out of the fundamentals. The notes, or progressions of notes, speak for themselves. They are indeed only there to speak for themselves, to express what the third says to the fifth, what the third says to the prime, or what the three of them say together when played in succession. Otherwise we find ourselves in the position of the distinguished European musician who once played a most complicated piece of many voices to an Arab. The Arab got into a terrible state of agitation, and said: ‘But why go so quickly? I should like to hear each song in its turn.’ He wanted each voice to be played separately, for he could not take in that the piece represents something quite other than a basically unmusical, noisy conglomeration of quite different things. [ 16]

I want to make clear to you the fact that in the musical element a real world is present, wherein we rediscover the impulses of the rest of the world.

Let us consider one fact. We die. The physical body remains, but it disintegrates. Why does it disintegrate? Why does it dissolve? The process of dissolution begins after death; up to that point the body does not disintegrate but remains intact. Why? Because previously we bore time within ourselves. From the moment when death occurs, the corpse lives only in space; it cannot participate in time. Because it can no longer participate in time, because it exists only in space and is subject to the laws of space, this fact makes it dead, this makes it fade away. We become a corpse because of the impossibility of bearing time within ourselves; we live, during earthly existence, because we are able to carry time within ourselves, to allow time to work within ourselves, because time is active in the material which extends in space. Melody is manifest in time. The chord is the corpse of melody. Melody dies in the chord.

As far as the understanding of music is concerned, our present age is in a sorry state. All these discussions about tone-colour in the overtones, and so on, are really only an attempt to make the single note into a kind of chord. People today have an innate tendency to find the harmonic element even in a single note. In reply to various questions as to how music ought to be developed, I have frequently answered that we must become aware of the melody in the single note; [ 17] in the single note we must become aware of the melody, not of the chord, but of the melody. One note conceals within itself a number of notes—every note at all events contains three. With the one note that you actually hear as sound, which is produced by an instrument and is actually audible, we have the present. Then there is another note within it, which is as if we recalled this second note. And there is a third note within it, which is as if we expected this third note. Every note really calls forth recollection and expectation as adjacent, melodic notes. This will come to be presented one day. [18] People will surely discover the possibility to deepen music by the single note becoming deepened into melody. Today people look for the chord in a single note and think about how this chord exists in the overtones. This, however, actually points to their materialistic conception of music.

Now the following question is unusual, but from the point of view of eurythmy it is fully justified: Where does the musical element really lie? Today there would be no doubt that the musical element lies in the notes, because such a terrific effort is required in the schools to put down these notes correctly, to arrange them in the right way. As you know, it all depends on mastering the notes. But the notes are not the music! Just as the human body is not the soul, so the notes are not the music. The interesting thing is that the music lies between the notes. We only need the notes in order that something may lie between them. The notes are necessary, of course, but the music lies between them. It is not the C nor the E which is essential, but what lies between the two. Such an element lying in-between, however, is only possible in the melodic element. In the chord it would be quite senseless. In harmony, such a lying in- between would be quite senseless. The transition from Melos to the harmonic element is really a stepwise transition from the musical to the unmusical realm. For through this the music is buried, through this the music is killed.

I could give you a somewhat peculiar definition of music. Naturally I should not want to give it in a music school, but I have to give it to eurythmists, for anyone really wishing to promote tone eurythmy has to understand these things. It is a negative definition, certainly, but nevertheless correct: What is the musical element? It is what you do not hear! [19] That which you hear is never musical. If you take the experience which exists in time, which lies between two notes of a melody, then you hear nothing, for it is only the notes themselves which are audible. What you inaudibly experience between the notes, that is music in reality, for that is the spiritual element of the matter, whereas the other is the sensory manifestation of it.

You see, this enables you in the most eminent sense to bring the human personality, the human personality as soul, into the musical element. [20] The more you are able to bring out that which cannot be heard, the more you use the audible as the vehicle for the inaudible, so much the more is the music permeated with the soul. To feel this in the musical element is precisely the task of the eurythmist. And this is why, in the gestures of eurythmy, in the manner we saw earlier (or as we have otherwise already seen them, or shall be showing them) with these gestures he or she should feel delight not in the position, but in the bringing about of the positions, that is, in the movement. In the whole extent of eurythmy, the essential thing is not in the making of poses, but in the movement.

You may never say (I have frequently emphasized this, but frequently see the opposite conception in practice), you may never say: This is an ee (stretched arm). For now it is an ee no longer. It is only an ee as long as it is being formed, as long as the arm is in movement; so long is it ee. Nothing in eurythmy ever retains its meaning once it has come into being. In eurythmy, the significance lies in the process of coming into being.

Consequently, the eurythmist has to pay great attention to the forming of the movement, directing the greatest care to that movement through which a form arises. And consideration must be taken, as soon as one form arises, to transform it as quickly as possible, to lead it over into the subsequent form. The eurythmist regards movement as his element, neither standing in, nor holding on to, the form.

Anyone sensitive to these things in eurythmy will especially feel the sort of things which we have already done, in the following way. Some piece of music has just finished; the piece is over and you stand in the last position until the curtain falls. (I have asked for this to be done in performances, but it must be felt too.) It is quite finished. The final position, the final figure has come to rest, and the curtain is drawn. What feeling should live here; what should we feel? That the eurythmist seizes up! We actually arrive at the annulling of the artistic, eurythmic activity. It is finished. We say, as it were, to the audience: [21] ‘Friends, we have now killed the performance so that you may come to yourselves and think about it a little.’ Standing still may certainly have this significance. That is why it is justified in relationship to the audience, but only in this relationship.

All this serves to show you how much it matters in every possible form to make a study of the human being in movement. There are three observations we can make about the human being. We know the human being exists in space, but that which is spatial in him does not belong to eurythmy. But what can manifest in space as movement; that is what belongs to eurythmy. And it is clear that the human being lives in space in a threefold manner.

We have thus the human being extended from above downwards, and from below upwards. But we have also the human being extended in the directions right-left and front-back, back-front. The other directions of space may be related to these three directions, which are so clearly to be distinguished in the human being. [23]

When the human being carries musical experience over into eurythmy, he carries it into movement. And he has no choice in his movements but to enter, in some way or other, into these three different directions. He has to find some way of making use of these three directions if the musical element is to be carried into movement, for they represent him and [all] his possibilities of movement. In eurythmy [all] the human possibilities of movement should become apparent.

When you take the directions of up-down and down-up (you will have gathered this from the still relatively primitive tone eurythmy we have had hitherto), when you take the directions up-down and down-up (also taking into account what I have said about the major and the minor triads, and so on, and in connection with the foot and the head), then you will be able to feel: The height of the human being, the up-down and the down-up, corresponds to pitch. We have no other means of expressing pitch than the upwards and downwards movement of the arms, of the hands, and indeed, if you like, the upwards and downwards movement of the legs or head. When making pitch visible, we move in the vertical direction (see Fig. 3).

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Now let us take right-left. This direction immediately carries us over into the gesture of movement. Where is it that the direction right-left makes itself especially apparent? The right-left is especially apparent when someone walks. Walking really is the bringing-into-movement of the right-left: right leg, left leg, right leg, left leg. And the direction right-left will remain lifeless just so long as you walk in life in a philistine manner; there will be no life in the right-left. But life is immediately introduced when we make some differentiation between the right-left, as nature does in that people usually write with the right hand and not with the left. A differentiation may also be shown simply by taking a strong step with the right leg, the left leg being drawn back, before placing it again. Everything that comes about in this way through the differentiation between right and left is connected with beat (see Fig. 3). Beat in music is carried over into eurythmic movement by means of the right-left.

There still remains the front-back. The point here is that the front- back is inwardly taken hold of, and in order to do so we must look at the human being a little more closely.

Now, you know, the front-back is not merely, let's say, as if some signpost is written with ‘front’ on the one side and ‘back’ on the other. The essential element of the front-back is that we see in front of us, but do not see behind us. Behind us is a world of darkness, in fact, of which we have scarcely an inkling, whereas in front of us lies the whole visible world opening out. And in our movement, we can turn the ‘front’ to the whole visible world, and then we are dealing with that which is in front. And when we turn to this ‘front’, it means that we make the movement short. We are right in the midst of the world. We make the movement short.

When we are not able to enter this world, when we are held back, stuck, as it were, to the darkness lying behind us and unable to get out of it, we make the movement long. And so we may simply differentiate the relationship between front and back by means of ‘short-long’. We have then u—or—u, iambus and trochee (see rhythm in Fig. 3). That means, we have rhythm; front-back confers the rhythm.

Now we possess three of the musical elements, and these may be used in your musical forms. If I may thus express it: you step the beat, you express the rhythm by means of quick-slow, and you express the actual musical element, Melos, leading the movements up or down accordingly. The entire human being is engaged in eurythmy by means of beat, rhythm and Melos.

Fundamentally speaking, music is the human being. And indeed it is from music that we may rightly learn how to free ourselves from matter. For if music were to become materialistic, it would actually be lying: it is not ‘there’ Every other form of matter is present in the world and is insistent. But musical sounds originally were not to be found in the material world. [8] We have to devise a means of producing them; they must first be made. The soul element, which lies between the notes, this lives in the human being. But today, because the world has become so unmusical, people are scarcely aware of it.

This will once again be taken into account when people realize that the note corresponds to the calm posture of the eurythmist. Let us now look at the major triad. (This was demonstrated.) Now you are no longer engaged in eurythmy, for eurythmy lies in the process of arriving at this position. The major triad lies in the going forwards, in the tending-towards, the coming-into-being, not in the accomplished fact. But the note as such corresponds to the completed posture. That means, the very moment a note is completed, the musical element ceases.

In this connection the following is of special interest: We have to be able to feel a relationship between the musical element and speech. If you endeavour in your listening to draw out the scale from the main vowels, most interesting things result:

C may be said to correspond to u (‘oo’ )
D to o (‘o’)
E to a (‘ah’ )
F to ö (‘ir’) (English equivalent as in: birth)
G to e (‘a’)
A to ü (‘eu’) (English equivalent as in: feud)
B to i (‘ee’)

This is the approximate correspondence between the scale and the main vowels, purely according to their sound. [24]

Now I would like you to make an oo with the legs. That is the keynote, as you all know. And now try to make the movement of a major or minor triad in the way we have already discussed, marking the third with its completing fifth. If you relate the movements and push them somewhat across, the fifth will be expressed in the movement of the a; it will become an a of its own accord.

After this try to make an ah; and now try most strongly to make a third, not with one hand as we otherwise do, but do the movement for the third with both arms, after imagining the keynote. Then you will find yourself in the eurythmy movement for the sound ah, with the third.

You see something very striking from this. If we listen very attentively it is almost possible to hear approximately this correspondence between the main vowels and the scale; if the sounds are articulated properly they do approximate to the scale. The movements of eurythmy bring this about of themselves. These movements rendering the formations of the musical sounds, also indicate those of the formations for the sounds of speech. This means that we cannot do otherwise in eurythmy than, when doing the right movements, to introduce the right conditions between the musical sounds and the sounds of speech, too.

We have never considered this other aspect of the movements that we have been studying all these years from the point of view of the sounds of speech and their formation; now we must try to realize them in their relationship to the form of the musical sounds. We have to become clear about the approximate correspondence between the scale and the formation of the sounds of speech. And when we compare the formation of the musical sounds with those for the sounds of speech, we find that their resemblance corresponds to the same degree as that between the musical sounds and the speech sounds as such. Of course, it's not the same; there is simply a resemblance. Neither in eurythmy are the two identical.

You see from this how naturally what we call eurythmy arises out of the very essence of speech on the one hand, and of the musical element on the other. That is quite plainly to be seen. And when you have entered into these things, you will be able to feel in no other way than: A musical sound or sound of speech can have only one gesture; it cannot be expressed in a variety of ways.

Let us continue tomorrow.