The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Eurythmy as a Free Art

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Last Monday, we had the privilege of demonstrating eurythmy as an educational and teaching tool, and I took the liberty of speaking about eurythmy as a form of gymnastics imbued with soul and spirit. Today, eurythmy will be presented to you here as a free art. To attempt to explain that which seeks to reveal itself as art is, in fact, an unartistic endeavor. For everything that is truly artistic must take effect through that which it immediately presents itself as in perception. And on the other hand, human beings demand of what is truly artistic that they be able to grasp its entire essence without first having to seek a path, however indirectly, through a conceptual or other explanation.

[ 2 ] If, however, I may take the liberty of saying a few words by way of introduction, it is because the eurythmy we have been exploring here at the Goetheanum and elsewhere represents an art form that draws on previously unfamiliar artistic sources and also employs an unfamiliar artistic language of form. And regarding these artistic sources and this artistic formal language, please allow me to say a few words first.

[ 3 ] What enables eurythmy to reveal itself as a free art are the movements of the human being in his or her individual limbs, or the movements of groups of people in space. These movements are neither merely mimetic nor pantomimic, nor are they merely gestural or even dance-like; rather, eurythmy is intended to be a truly visible language—a visible language derived from sensory and supersensory observations of the human organism itself—so that through eurythmy one can bring forth from the human being something that emerges just as organically from within — without being a momentary gesture or a momentary facial expression — just as human speech itself does. And just as sound—or, in singing, the tone—flows out of the human inner being according to certain laws, so too must that which appears as the art of eurythmy come from the human inner being, from the inner being of the human organism.

[ 4 ] The point here is that, as I said, in sensory-supersensory observation one must carefully study which potentials for movement or tendencies toward movement arise in the human organs of speech or singing when a person prepares to sing or speak. I say explicitly: tendencies toward movement, because what I mean by this does not become an actual movement; rather, one can really only observe what underlies it as it is emerging—in a sense, in its nascent state— for what seeks to form as movement in the organs of speech and singing is already halted in its emergence by the active, singing, or speaking human being and transformed into those movements that can then produce the tone or sound, so that what arises as potential for movement in individual organ systems—in the human system of speech or singing—must be projected onto the whole human being. This is entirely in accordance with the principle of Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis. Goethe regards the individual leaf as a simplified plant, and in turn the whole plant as a complex leaf. What Goethe applies here solely to morphological observations can be elevated to the realm of art. One can apply the range of movement inherent in an individual organ system to the whole human being, just as nature applies the form of the individual leaf, in a more complex form, to the entire plant. Then the whole human being becomes a speaking or singing organ. And even groups of people become a speaking or singing organ. And one should seek no connection between an individual movement and an individual mental process, just as one should seek no connection between an individual sound or tone and what is taking place in the soul. But just as the formation of speech as a whole follows certain laws, so too does the formation of eurythmic movements as a whole follow definite laws; and one arrives at this by allowing the human being, through eurythmy, to reveal precisely that artistic element—which underlies both singing and speech—in its most essential form. For in speech, the human organism brings together the intellectual and that which does not merely emerge from the head like the intellectual, but comes from the whole human being: the volitional. But the more the purely intellectual dominates any given content, the less artistic that content is. Thought kills the artistic. And only to the extent that the element of will—which emanates from the whole, from the complete human being—can be conveyed through language is there truly anything artistic and poetic to be found in language.

[ 5 ] Therefore, the poet who is truly an artist must wage a constant battle against the prosaic element of language. This is particularly true of civilized languages, where language increasingly serves as an expression of rational thought on the one hand, or of thought suited to social convention on the other. As languages become increasingly embedded in civilization, they become an ever more unsuitable medium for expressing that spiritual quality which the artistic poet must truly seek. Therefore, going beyond the content of prose, the poet must, through rhythm, rhyme, harmonies, meter, and the musical or imaginative-thematic elements, in a sense lead language back to that element in which human beings, through sound or tone, become revelators of the spiritual and thereby can truly elevate this sound or tone into the spiritual-artistic realm.

[ 6 ] Since eurythmy, by virtue of its unique nature—expressing itself through movement—acts in a fundamental, natural way from the human will, it is precisely through eurythmy that the truly artistic—in both music and poetry—can be drawn out of the human being. And that which the poet—I might say—already strives for in an invisible form of eurythmy can be made visible before one’s eyes through those human movements that occur in eurythmy. One can create an accompaniment to any piece of music in eurythmy, in which case a kind of visible song is presented—one can sing in eurythmy just as one can sing audibly—; and one can also portray the poetic in eurythmy; in that case, what appears before the audience on stage as eurythmy must be accompanied by the recitation or declamation of the poem. In an unartistic age, people will have little understanding of what is necessary in recitation and declamation as an accompaniment to the art of eurythmy. And today’s age is precisely such an unartistic age.

[ 7 ] Today, we have little understanding of what Goethe meant, for example, when he himself rehearsed his iambic dramas with a baton in hand, like a conductor working with his actors. He did not focus on the prose content; he focused on the artistic shaping of the iambic meter. Or it is difficult to understand how Schiller, particularly in his most significant poems, did not initially have the literal prose content in mind, but rather a melodious theme into which he, so to speak, first incorporated the literal prose content. In an unartistic age such as our own, where the significance of declamation and recitation is seen precisely in emphasizing the prose content—in making whatever lies behind the prose content in terms of rhythm, rhyme, harmony, and musical and imaginative themes that lie behind the prose content—in such an age, people will understand little of what forms recitation and declamation must take in order to appear alongside the eurythmic.

[ 8 ] But the person who lacks an artistic sensibility must understand precisely how a secret eurythmy is sought even in true poetry, and how this secret, invisible eurythmy can reveal itself in the visible language in which it appears here. Time and again, when faced with such performances, I must say that we ask the audience for their indulgence, precisely because we know very well that this eurythmy is still in the very early stages of its development. But those who immerse themselves in its very essence can also know that it holds unlimited possibilities for development. Why? Because when Goethe says: “To whom nature begins to reveal her manifest secret, that person feels the deepest longing for her most worthy interpreter, art”—then perhaps it may be added, in justification of eurythmy: “To whom the human being itself, in its form and movement, begins to reveal its secret, feels the deepest longing to reveal to the eye what lies within this human form in terms of possibilities of movement and eurythmic expression.”

[ 9 ] When Goethe says elsewhere: “When a human being is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself, in turn, as nature itself; he brings together order, harmony, proportion, and meaning in order to rise to the creation of a work of art”—then, with regard to eurythmy, one may say: Eurythmy does not make use of an external tool, but of the human being himself, and indeed, all the secrets of the world are truly hidden within the human being. When they are drawn out of him, the revelation of these secrets of humanity—these microcosmic secrets—is a revelation of the macrocosmic secrets.

[ 10 ] Eurythmy uses the human being itself as its instrument, drawing from the human essence order, harmony, proportion, and meaning, and presenting the human being itself as a work of art. Since it undertakes this task, it must possess unlimited potential for development, for if the human being is taken as an instrument for artistic expression, this is certainly the most worthy artistic instrument.

[ 11 ] And so we may hope that the pursuit of eurythmy, which is still in its infancy today, will give rise—perhaps to some extent through our own efforts, but more likely through the efforts of others—to artistic revelations that can establish eurythmy as a fully-fledged younger art form alongside its fully-fledged older sister arts.