The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Holiday children from Munich spent a few weeks in Dornach, receiving eurythmy lessons from Tatiana Kisseleff and performing some staff exercises.

A group of German children on holiday:

Balen and Spreiden with musical accompaniment by Max Schuurman
Stabübungen: up-down-right-left and spiral with musical accompaniment by L.eopold van der Pals and Qui-Qui with musical accompaniment by Max Schuurman
Alliterations and vowels
We, we...
The Cloud Illuminator
“The Herdsman” by Fercher von Steinwand

Eurythmy group:

TIAOAIT with a musical prelude by Max Schuurman “Hope” by Friedrich Schiller
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner “Calm Sea” and “Happy Voyage” by J. W. v. Goethe
Opening “Look around you, look within” with music by Leopold van der Pals
“In the tree, you dear little bird there“ by Christian Morgenstern
“The walk” by Martin Opitz with music by Max Schuurman, with singing
“Selige Leichtigkeit“ by Christian Morgenstern
“The birth of the pearl” by Fercher von Steinwand with the start of the waves with music by Leopold van der Pals
EVOE (eurythmy without words) with music by Max Schuurman
“A dream experience“ with music by Louise van Blommestein (with vocals and two violins)
“The Worm's Confession” by Christian Morgenstern with music by Max Schuurman for vocals, sound and lute eurythmy
Opening with music by Jan Stuten Satirical opening with music by L.eopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The picket fence”; “The walking man”; “Moon things”; “The aesthetic weasel”

Of the following

First version of the address

So, dear children, you have been allowed to come here from your homeland, you have been allowed to see the beautiful mountains, the beautiful fields, the meadows, and you have been allowed to get to know the friendly people who have taken you in, you have been able to enjoy this friendly welcome that you have received here in beautiful, dear Switzerland. And now, yesterday and today, we also wanted to show you what we have to show here. You have seen many things up here. When you reflect later and remember what you have seen, and when you understand the word eurythmy, then hopefully this will be a beautiful memory, a beautiful thought.

You know that man has the beautiful gift, the beautiful gift of God, of language. But one usually speaks with the mouth. What you have seen here in eurythmy is also a language, a speaking, only the whole person speaks. And one day you will all know what it is in the human being that you call the soul. You do not yet know, you cannot yet know what is in the human being, what is in you and what you will one day call the soul. But what you have seen here, the movements made with the arms, the movements made in the circle and elsewhere, all that is spoken, spoken not to be heard but to be seen. And it is not the mouth that speaks, but the whole person, it is the soul in the person. And if you should ask later: What dwells in my breast? – the soul lives there – then remember that yesterday and today you learned how the soul speaks through the human being, through his limbs.

And now I would like to say a few words to the adults above your heads about what you see and what you will understand better later.

How what we call a eurythmic experiment, how this our eurythmy is an embodiment, one might say, of Goethe's world view and Goethe's view of art, how we have to think of it in the first third of the 20th century, not in Goethe's time itself. Goethe, as a human being, looked more deeply into the living essence of nature than any of his contemporaries and especially than any of the generations that followed him. The depth of Goethe's world view has still not been fully appreciated today.

What can be gained from Goethe's world view in a narrowly defined area is to be presented through our eurythmy. Goethe sees the whole plant only as a more complicated leaf. For Goethe, every leaf is a window through which he can see the whole plant with his supersensible eye. And this view, which is far from being fully developed, can be artistically perfected further and further in accordance with this world view. Here it is applied in a specific, concrete area.

Those who can intuitively see what is actually going on in the whole person when speaking, especially when speaking artistically and poetically, know that these movements and activities carried out by the larynx and neighboring organs are related to the whole person in the same way that Goethe believed that the leaf is related to the whole plant. The leaf is a metamorphosis of the whole plant. For us here, what is expressed in human speech by the larynx and its neighboring organs is a metamorphosis of what the whole human being holds back, what he actually wants to express by listening. And those who can see supersensibly know that it is not just a theory to imagine that we set the air in motion through our speech organs; so that speech carries within it an invisible movement.

That is what we attempt in eurythmy: to make the whole human being an extended larynx in movement, to visualize everything that otherwise remains invisible in speech because we otherwise take it for granted that our attention is directed towards hearing. To make visible the visualization of speech through the whole human being, that is what we strive for in eurythmy. There is nothing arbitrary about it. Not everything has been achieved yet. The art of eurythmy is only just beginning, it is only the attempt at a beginning. All pantomime and all arbitrariness are excluded. Just as music itself is structured in accordance with the laws of harmony, with each note following naturally from the one that precedes it, so too is the structure of major and minor keys in music. When two people or two groups of people perform the same thing in eurythmy at two different places, there must not be more individual differences in the performance than there are when two different pianists play the same Beethoven sonata with their own personal interpretation. It is always structured according to the law.

That is what we are striving for and by which we want to try to achieve something artistic on the one hand, but on the other hand also to achieve something pedagogically hygienic. Artistically, I would like to say, this great Goethean principle of art should be expressed, which he expresses, for example, when he says: Man is placed at the summit of nature and feels again as a whole nature. He takes order, measure, harmony and meaning together and finally rises to the production of the work of art. Here the whole human being becomes a work of art through those possibilities of movement that lie in the whole human being as they do in the larynx, where they remain invisible. These should come to light. The inner soul-feeling that glows in speech, the inner warmth of soul that comes from the enthusiasm of our personality, and what the poet brings forth in rhyme and rhythm, all this comes to the fore in the group movements and movements of people in outer space. There is nothing more arbitrary about the inner lawfulness than is necessary to present it artistically when two different performers present one and the same thing.

Of course, the fact that I am saying these few introductory words does not prejudice the artistic aspect. After all, art is based on the fact that it can be enjoyed directly. But the supersensible sources of all artistic creation in Goethe's sense should be pointed out. It seems necessary to me to create a new art form in this area, which we want to create in addition to everything else that we would like to create for our building.

Eurythmy will be accompanied on the one hand by recitation and on the other by music. The same thing that is heard in recitation, the same thing that is heard in music, the same thing should be represented in eurythmy through the forms of eurythmy. I would just like to mention that the art of recitation must return to the old, good forms. Those people who are here today have actually, at heart, [kcome to know a true art of recitation; this basically ended in the 1870s.

I recall that Goethe was so imbued with this art of recitation that he rehearsed his “Iphigenia” with his actors, baton in hand like a conductor. This is entirely justified, because what matters is not that the prosaic recitation – as is the case today, out of a certain materialistic tendency – particularly emphasizes the literal content, but rather that the artistic, the rhythmic, that which is not the prose content but the artistic form is expressed in the recitation. Then, in the parallel recitation and eurythmy, one sees how the whole human being is actually structured, to move inwardly in this way when the poet creates something artistic, when anything artistic is created at all.

I would just like to remind you that before Schiller visualized the content of a poem in his mind, he did not have the literal concept in his imagination, but rather an indeterminate melodiousness, a musicality in his soul. Schiller created entirely from the musically moved soul. The rhythmic impulse, the inward movement, which is then transferred to the prose content, was present in the most important of Schiller's poems. In turn, we want to let the emphasis of the prose content of a poem recede to a certain extent and express the actual poetry in the recitation, which should go hand in hand with the eurythmy.

You will, of course, have to be lenient: we are only just beginning with our eurythmy. Above all, it should be noted that the pantomime, the mimicry, the momentary gesture, that all will come later when the eurythmy is more perfected. We are our own harshest critics and we know that we are still at an imperfect stage with the art of eurythmy today. But we believe that when the whole human being is called upon in the sense of Goethe, so that one feels that higher natural laws shine through what is presented externally to the senses, then, on the basis of this Goethean world view, a new, genuine art, which is something nobler than the art of dance that one otherwise has, will also be able to emerge.

And what is basically only physiological in gymnastics, what only trains the body, the outer body, should be imbued with soul in eurythmy, so that it becomes apparent that the soul vibrates and speaks everywhere, so that we also want to incorporate an element of pedagogy into our eurythmic art. I believe I may commend to your forbearance, above all, what we are now able to present in a still imperfect way. But we hope that if our contemporaries show some interest in this attempt, then we will be able to bring this eurythmic art in particular to such perfection – perhaps no longer through us, but through others who will follow – that it will be able to establish itself as a new art, fully entitled to stand alongside the other older arts.

I wanted to say these few words, dear attendees, to introduce our eurythmy performance.

Second version of the address:

It's great that you dear children have come up to visit us again before you have to leave dear Switzerland, where you have received so much love. Haven't you? You've had a good time? And then you were also able to learn a lot, and those who took part in the eurythmy will probably also have fond memories of it in later life. Something should be expressed through eurythmy, as if you want to say something. When we speak, this only happens with the larynx and its neighboring organs; the layers of air are set in motion and waves form in the air. We usually do not see this because we do not focus on it, but listen to what is being spoken. In the same way, eurythmy, like the larynx, seeks to express something through the whole body. Eurythmy is a word that one sees, not hears. What the soul bears within it is made manifest through the eurythmic presentation.

You are not yet able to understand what it means to have a soul. But when something stirs in your breast later in life, you will also experience that you have a soul. And then what has been lying dormant in your memory may also speak to you of what you were allowed to see and partly learn up here. And now, looking down at the heads of the children (they were sitting at the front), I would like to say a few words to the adults who have come to watch our eurythmy performances.

The art of eurythmy is based on Goethe's world view. Just as Goethe saw the whole plant in the green leaf, we assume that the larynx, which produces the word, with its ancillary organs, is a metamorphosis of the whole human organism. Goethe called the leaf a metamorphosis of the plant because the whole essence of the plant is hidden in the leaf. The whole plant develops step by step out of the leaf; it metamorphoses into a calyx, a flower, and a fruit leaf. Therefore, the leaf can be seen as a representative of the whole plant. And so it is with the human larynx. What the word reveals about the soul lives in the whole human organism, and the whole organism can bear witness to this.

An attempt to do this is to be the eurythmy. There is nothing arbitrary movement, but everything in the sense meant that otherwise speaks through the word. And if different people do the same, and it seems a difference in the presentation is noticeable, so that is no different than when two different people play the same Beethoven sonata. What eurythmy wants to say is the same for everyone and is perfectly adapted to what is to be expressed. Every movement and every measure of time has its meaning. It is the musical-rhythmic element that also comes into its own in the spoken word of poetry. Schiller felt this very strongly; for him, the musical-rhythmic element of the form was always the first thing in the conception of his poetry. Before he formulated the content and material, before he even formulated a single thought, he was concerned with the rhythmic theme, the musical harmony, as it stirred in his soul.

Nowadays, our poetry has sunk to a state of complete disregard for this meaningfulness. Poetry, like prose, is read only for its content, and few people still know how to read poetry. It was only in the 1870s that people were still concerned with this – and those who lived at that time could still hear something about what rhythm means in poetry.

In the past, this was something essential, and it is said that Goethe practised his “Iphigenia” with a baton on the Weimar stage. Our eurythmic performances should also be in the spirit of Goethe. And I think that despite many imperfections - especially in the pantomimes - you will find something better in them than in what ordinary dance art has to offer. The first performances by the children are by those who have only taken part in an initial course of twelve hours, without any further preliminary training. Therefore, we ask for your indulgence. Your indulgence will also have to be sought again for everything else, because, as I said, it is an art that is only just beginning to emerge and is therefore far from being able to present anything complete.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Dear attendees!

The eurythmic art that we are presenting to you today is an art form that strives to make use of new means of expression, means of expression that are inherent in the human limbs themselves. The development of this eurythmic art is based entirely on the Goethean world view, on which, after all, everything that you see realized here in this building is based. And in fact, an attempt has been made to artistically shape in a particular, limited area that which, in Goethe's great world view, has still not been fully appreciated today, and is still awaiting its full appreciation. I do not want to precede the eurythmic presentation with long-winded theoretical discussions, but what Goethe gave as the results of his observations in his world view is never one-sidedly scientific. It is always imbued with artistic spirit. And it is this Goethean artistic spirit that we would like to see permeate this art of spatial movement that we call eurythmy.

In his understanding of the living world, Goethe goes far beyond what science already recognizes today. And it is to be hoped that precisely that which Goethe himself describes as his metamorphic view will acquire great significance for the future of humanity.

If I am to present the simplest of Goethe's worldviews to you, it is that for Goethe, every single plant leaf is a whole plant – only in terms of its structure – and the whole plant is in turn a complex leaf. All the individual organs of the plant are only transformed leaves, and are therefore basically one and the same. The outer form repeats the essential in the most diverse ways. What Goethe wrote down in his magnificent essay on plants in 1790 can be applied to understanding all living things in nature. It can be applied in particular to understanding the human being.

But we can go further. We can also look at the human being in terms of Goethe's world view by interpreting the expression of a single organ as the movement of the whole person, or vice versa. The movements that the whole person can carry out, can make, appear as the repetition, the more complicated repetition, of that which an organ of the human body carries out.

For us, my dear audience, what comes into consideration here is what the human larynx and its neighboring organs carry out when a person speaks. In ordinary life and in that revelation of human nature that is expressed in poetry or the art of recitation, people's attention is drawn to what can be heard through the activity of the larynx and its neighboring organs. But if we have the opportunity to see with supersensible vision what is at work in the human larynx and its neighboring organs, if we have the opportunity to see through the tendencies and impulses of movement that are active while we speak, then we can, so to speak, form a visible language out of it, which the whole human being performs.

You need only imagine, my dear audience, that as we speak, the air is continually moving in waves through the larynx and its neighboring organs. And the manifestation of these undulating movements is, after all, the heard word. These undulations, when seen in their essence, can be transferred to the whole human being. And so, when you watch the characters on the stage, you will, in a sense, see the whole human being as a large larynx, which, in its individual parts, performs that which is performed invisibly when you listen to the speech.

These are the new means of expression for this eurythmic art of movement. According to Goethe's artistic philosophy, all art is based on a mysterious revelation of nature, on the revelation of natural laws that would never be recognized without art. For Goethe, that which can be artistically shaped moves into the sphere of knowledge. He says: Art is based on a mysterious recognition, insofar as it allows us to penetrate the essence of things visibly and tangibly.

And it is particularly interesting to penetrate that which is present in the whole human being as a possibility of movement. So you will see a visible language in eurythmy. And that which is otherwise expressed in our language, namely that which is expressed in artistically and poetically shaped language, can also be expressed through our eurythmic art.

When you see an individual in a standing position, the movements they perform are a transformed, enlarged larynx. But when the individual human being or groups of people carry out their movements in space here on the stage, these movements reveal everything that warms our language from the soul, everything that can penetrate our language as enthusiasm, everything that can also penetrate our language as pain and suffering. All these nuances of the soul that pass through language can be expressed through this spatial-movement art.

Nothing in this art is arbitrary. Just as music itself is based on — and is very similar to — the eurythmic art, or rather the eurythmic art is similar to music. Just as the musical art regularly and lawfully follows its tones in the melodious element, and how it combines tones in the harmonic element, so too is everything in the eurythmic art inwardly lawful. You must not think that it is a mere art of gesturing, a mere mimic art. It is not a peculiar attunement of what lives in the human being with the outer movement that is striven for here, but the connection between what wants to express itself in the soul and the movement that is made is a very inner, lawful one. And the sequence of movements is as internally lawful as in music.

Therefore, the art of eurythmy can be accompanied by music. On the one hand, it parallels the musical arts. On the other hand, it parallels the art of recitation. So you will hear one and the same motif of the human soul musically, see it presented in eurythmy and hear it in recitation.

One cannot recite to the eurythmic art as one likes to recite today. The eurythmic art in particular forces one to lead the art of recitation back to its actual artistic element. Today one actually recites prosaically. The highest value is placed on expressing the content of the poetry in the recitation. But for the truly artistically perceptive person, this is not the main thing. The rhythmic element, which is also expressed here in the movements of the people and groups of people in space, the rhythmic element, the whole inner shaping of the supporting element, is what is most important to the poet.

I need only remind you that a poet like Schiller never first had the content, or at least often did not first have the content of a poem in his soul; but before he knew what he was writing about, what the content of the poem should be, an indeterminate melodious tone formation went through his soul and he formed the poem according to this tone formation. Therefore, the art of recitation that must accompany our eurythmy today will still be misunderstood in many ways, because we have to go back to older forms of recitation.

I would also like to remind you that in his time, Goethe still wanted to express the formative, actually artistic aspect of the language form. When he rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, he had a baton in his hand so that the language would not be spoken prosaically, but so that the iambs, the rhythm of the language, would really be expressed. which today would be perceived as unnatural, because in our materialistic time the actual artistic feeling has declined and one also wants to emphasize the special content in recitation, in the art of lecturing.

If you do notice elements of pantomime in our eurythmic performances, I would ask you to bear in mind that we are still at the very beginning of our artistic development. This is why there are still some imperfections. But all pantomime and random gestures are actually still imperfections. If two performers, two completely different performers, were to perform the same thing eurythmically at different times and in different places, they would do so in the same way because eurythmy has an inner lawfulness, so that the individual differences would only be as great as when two pianists play one and the same Beethoven sonata according to their individual peculiarities. So this inner lawfulness is, of course, what we strive for. Everything that is striven for with the means you have just characterized for the art of eurythmy must flow into the spatial movement in such a way that the immediate view has an aesthetic, artistic effect.

But this is also the basis of Goethe's philosophy: in all art, we perceive the inner laws and harmony of nature directly, by excluding the intellect. Goethe once expressed this very beautifully when he said: “Man, placed at the summit of nature, beholds himself in turn as a whole of nature, taking in order, measure, meaning, and harmony, in order to finally rise to the production of a work of art.”

It is particularly appealing to elevate that which is inherent in man himself to a work of art. This inward disposition of the human being, conceived as a work of art, conceived as a work of art in accordance with the nature of the moving human being: that is eurythmy, the same eurythmy that vibrates invisibly in our sequence of sounds when we speak, when we name, when we repeat poetic and artistic utterances. Nevertheless, I would ask you to be lenient in your judgment of what we will present to you today. We ourselves are the harshest critics of what we are already able to do with this eurythmic art. We know that everything is still in the process of becoming, that everything is still imperfect. But we hope that we ourselves, or if not ourselves, then others, will bring it to perfection. And when what is only intended today is fully expressed as the eurythmic art, then this eurythmic art will be able to stand alongside other arts as a fully significant art. However, we do not want to compete with neighboring arts, such as the now so popular dance arts. Eurythmy should be something completely different. It should express what the human being has within himself as a movement disposition: soulful movement.

And so we also believe that eurythmy will one day play a major role in teaching and education, in that mere physical movement in gymnastics will then be imbued with soul, in that eurythmy will take the place of mere physical gymnastics. This will probably enable eurythmy to be integrated into the overall culture of the human spirit, on the one hand as an art form and on the other as something that plays a major role in the overall education of the human being.

We do indeed know that all of this is still in its infancy today, and so I ask you to bear with us as we perform. Regarding the program before the intermission, I would like to add that the Nietzsche poem 'My Happiness' will be inserted after 'Stroll'. So the program before the intermission has been extended by two numbers.

What Goethe's world view is capable of is not something that arises one-sidedly from a merely theoretical observation of the world. Everything in Goethe that leads to an idea about nature and the human world is at the same time imbued with a true artistic feeling. In Goethe, art is scientifically illuminated, and science is artistically formed in thought. Therefore, his world view can be used to bridge the gap in artistic expression everywhere.

Now, it is easy to express how he views the development of life in nature. In the individual plant leaf, no matter how simply formed, Goethe saw the blueprint for an entire plant. And in turn, he saw the whole plant as nothing more than a plant leaf with a complicated structure. So, Goethe imagined that the entire plant consists of many, many individual plants. This is a view that can be applied to all living things, especially to the pinnacle of life in nature, to humans. In doing so, one can initially think only of the metamorphosis of forms, as Goethe did as a morphologist. One can think that the overall form of an organism is a more complicated design than the form of a single organ. This is how Goethe initially developed the idea.

But one can also consider that what an organ performs in a living organism is, in miniature, the same as what the whole organism performs, and vice versa. One can think that the activity of the whole organism is a more complicated manifestation of what the individual organ performs. This thought, the fruitfulness of which, as already mentioned, will only be fully recognized in the future, also by science, this thought underlies our eurythmic art.

When we listen to a person speaking, our attention is naturally drawn first to the sequence of sounds, to what is expressed in speech in the tones. But for those who see the supersensible in the sensory, for those who have intuitive vision and can penetrate the secrets of nature through this intuitive vision, there is an invisible movement in the larynx and neighboring organs with each individual sound. And the sequence of sounds is manifested in invisible movements.

We can also visualize how, although not in the visible, the movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs is expressed in terms of what is known to science. You know that what one speaks, what sounds out of the speech organism, is transformed into waves of movement in the air. We do not see these waves of movement; we hear what has been spoken. The person with supersensible vision sees what lies in the waves of the air while we speak. He sees it in the mysterious movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs. The larynx is a single organ of the human organism.

Just as the whole plant is a more complex leaf in the Goethean sense, so the whole human being with his limbs can be called upon to move, which only more complexly represent that which the larynx represents as a single organ when speaking. Then that essence of the whole human being will be expressed which one can call a visible language. And this eurythmy is the visible language we are striving for. What you see of the individual person on the stage through the movements of the limbs of the human organism is, so to speak, the visible, moving larynx and its neighboring organs: the whole person becomes the larynx through eurythmy. Thus, what is otherwise present supersensibly in the larynx's movement patterns is revealed outwardly.

One could also express it differently: you will know, esteemed attendees, if you practice even a little self-knowledge, that actually, when we listen to a person, there is always an inner supersensible art of imitation in us. We hold back, and it is simply true that we listen by holding back certain supersensible movements in our organism that resonate with the vibrations of the speaker. These movements, which we hold back when we listen in the usual way, standing or sitting still, are presented to the eye in eurythmy. The listener who moves, who, as it were, shows the reflection of what is being said everywhere in the way he listens, that is the eurythmist.

In addition to what I have already mentioned, “the whole person becomes the larynx”, so that what is spoken by the person is warmed by the feeling of the soul, that it is imbued with joy, enthusiasm, pain, suffering; that moods vibrate through. All this can also be expressed through eurythmy. We express it, not by setting a stationary human being in motion or having a human being in one place perform eurythmy, but by having the individual human being move in space, or having groups of people in space form certain shapes or perform certain movements in relation to each other. When the human being moves in space, it expresses what vibrates through language in the soul as mood, as enthusiasm, as suffering and as joy. All that is expressed in artistically formed language by the poet in rhythm and rhyme – all this is expressed through movement.

In this context, I would ask you to bear in mind that the art of eurythmy is not facial expression, pantomime or the art of gestures, and that it has nothing to do with ordinary dance. In all these art forms, what lives in the soul is expressed through a direct gesture or the like, through a direct movement. Eurythmy is something like music itself. There is nothing arbitrary about the movement that is performed, but something so lawful in the individual movement and sequence of movements that one can say: just as the harmonies are in music, how the melody, the sequence of notes reveal themselves, so there is an inner lawfulness in what is represented by eurythmy.

Therefore, it may well be that you see each eurythmist expressing only their own individual possibilities – nothing arbitrary. The opposite is the case. Just as when a Beethoven sonata is performed by two people on the piano, different individual elements arise, but the thing performed is the same, so it is when two people or two groups of people perform the same thing in eurythmy. There is an individual conception in it, but fundamentally it goes beyond any arbitrariness - as in music itself.

What the human being otherwise reveals in speaking, singing, and music, in fact in all artistically shaped speech, becomes visible speech in eurythmy. Therefore, on the one hand, you will see parallels between music, which expresses what lives in the human soul in a different way, and what is expressed in eurythmy, which is done in a different way. You will see the eurythmic presentation accompanied by a recitation that is intended to reflect the artistic, poetic language, which is then presented in the eurythmic art as an accompaniment to the recitation. It shows that, when eurythmy is accompanied by recitation, this recitation itself must go back to better times of the art of recitation than we have today. Today, one loves to recite, I would say, prosaically, emphasizing the prose content, placing the main emphasis on the content being expressed poetically. If we go further back in the development of the art of recitation, we see how the content is, so to speak, only taken as an opportunity to present rhythms, inner movement, the actual artistic element. Not only that in certain primeval times of art the reciters who performed, I would like to say in primitive eurythmy accompanied what they recited, and placed the highest value on the structure of the verses, on that which is otherwise artistic design. In actual poetry, we also find that the poem arises out of an inner music, that is, out of the rhythm and formation of the sound. We know that Schiller did not begin with the content of many of his poems in his soul, but that the content of the poem could be quite distant for him. But there was a melodious element in his soul, and this still wordless, still thought-free melodious element, he then put it into words and added, so to speak, the content of the poem. Today, the recitation is based on prose, on the novella. This would not work with eurythmy.

That is why it is so easily misunderstood that what had to emerge as an art of recitation in eurythmy. This art of recitation must in turn emphasize the true artistic nature of the shaped language, not what today so easily loves the merely prosaic in terms of content.

In so far as you will still see mimicry or pantomime, I ask you to regard it as something that is still imperfect. For I may well, having said these words about the intentions of the eurythmic art, I may well emphasize that we know very well that the eurythmic art is only just beginning, that it is perhaps only the will of an intention. But in this intention lies something that can become an art, that can stand alongside the other arts as fully entitled. Not only can the artistic be grasped by people in a truly Goethean sense through this eurythmic art, but one can also believe that it can have an educational and didactic effect in the future: as a soul-filled form of exercise alongside gymnastics that is purely based on physiology and physicality. And in education, as soul-inspired physical exercise that is also an art (it can also be seen as eurythmy), we will gradually introduce a soul-inspired art of movement for the human organism into our education and pedagogy at the Waldorf school – in contrast to soulless physical exercise that is aimed purely at physical culture. Eurythmy can be fruitful in these two ways.

Essentially, of course, it depends on the fact that the human being is the highest being on the scale of the organic, of the living, that we know on earth for the time being, and that therefore a truly supreme expression of natural law can come about in him. Therefore, if we educate the human being himself to be an instrument of artistic expression, what Goethe hopes for from human artistic activity can be fulfilled to the highest degree, in that he says: “By being placed at the pinnacle of nature, man in turn produces a pinnacle within himself, taking measure, harmony, order and meaning together, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. In this, Goethe sees something like the solution to the riddle of the world, when humanity can, in the mirror of art, receive back what the world holds in its secrets. And when man regards himself as the instrument of this reflection, then he is evidently fulfilling something that can be understood as a summary of the most diverse artistic motifs.

But I ask you again to look at what we are able to offer with some leniency, because it is a beginning, and we are our own harshest critics, we are well aware of what is still imperfect, but we believe that this imperfection, if it is further developed by ourselves or by others, will become a fully-fledged art form alongside other art forms.

“Symbolum” by J. W. v. Goethe with musical addition by Leopold van der Pals
“Zueignung“ by Novalis
“From the Song of Solomon” by an unknown poet from the Middle Ages
Opening “We want to search...” with music by Max Schuurman
“The last word” by Fercher von Steinwand with musical accompaniment by Max Schuurman
Prelude ‘We are looking for...’ with music by Leopold van der Pals ‘Reconciliation’ by J. W. v. Goethe
From ‘Chinese-German Years and Times of Day’ by J- W. v. Goethe
“Er ist's“ by Eduard Mörike From the collection of poems ‘Der Tag’ by Hans Reinhart Humorous prelude with music by Jan Stuten
“Der Tanz”, “Die beiden Esel”, “Philanthropisch”, “Die Wald geiss”, “Die Fingur”, from: “Die Galgenlieder ”by Christian Morgenstern
“Gretchen in the Cathedral” scene from ‘Faust I’ by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words to introduce our eurythmy presentation. This eurythmic art is not meant to be a dance art or any other art that could be considered a neighboring art. It should be something that presents itself as an independent art movement alongside that which currently exists as a dance art or similar. What we recognize here as the eurythmic art was conceived and born out of the Goethean worldview, out of Goetheanism. We shall only understand what we understand by Goetheanism here if we think not of Goethe, who died in 1832, but of the Goethean genius, which lives on and must be felt anew by each generation, and whose artistic and world-view intentions can be taken up by each generation and developed in one direction or another.

In a limited area - just as otherwise in the large the whole building and everything that we represent here comes from Goetheanism - in a limited area, our eurythmic art is also born out of a Goethean artistic and Goethean world-view attitude.

I do not wish to theorize, but to point out the source of this eurythmic art. Of course, everything that is artistic must make an aesthetic impression when seen directly. But the things make an aesthetic impression precisely because they have been brought forth from those sources of the existence of nature and the world, which the most rational mind does not penetrate, but which, as it were, come out of the infinite depths of the nature of things. And so, without becoming theoretical, I may point out how this eurythmic art is born out of the whole spirit of Goethe's world view. That is the significant thing about Goethe's artistic attitude: it does not present itself as something quite separate from the rest of human perception. Rather, Goethe is imbued with the conviction that what what is to be created artistically is connected with the most intimate powers of cognition, with nature and the essence of things, insofar as we are able to perceive them through the eye or through other organs. Goethe sees only a developed leaf in the individual plant, which is intricately designed. For Goethe, a single plant leaf is an entire plant, only in an elementary, primitive form. The whole plant is a more complicated leaf for Goethe.

This view, fully developed, will mean much, much more for the human world view than it does today. For in such a view we shall find the foundation for everything that can go out from our science of the dead to knowledge of the living. But what Goethe initially applied only to forms in terms of view can also be applied to movement.

Our eurythmy art should be a movement art that uses the whole human organism with its movements as its means. And so one can say: the human larynx with its neighboring organs is the organ of expression for audible speech. But for someone who can see the movement pattern in the human larynx, who can see what is not seen in ordinary life when we listen to someone speaking, for such a person there is a possibility of saying: a movement pattern of the human larynx and its neighboring organs is connected with every sound, with every sequence of sounds. What is present as a movement system in the human larynx and its neighboring organs can be transferred to the whole human organism. We can set the human limbs in motion in such a way that they precisely imitate what is present in the larynx for the purpose of human speech. Then, as the whole human being becomes a living, moving larynx on the stage before us, a visible language arises before us. And since the human being is an extract of the whole world, a real microcosm, this language, this visible language, is indeed an expression of the deepest secrets of the world.

What I am now going to explain, I would say in the abstract, must be felt aesthetically in the movements that come to view. And so what the individual person makes of the movement of his limbs becomes the expression of vocalization, of the sequence of sounds. While everything that flows against language, from inner warmth of soul, from joy and suffering, from enthusiasm and from everything else that vibrates in our language, while that is expressed in the movements that an individual makes in space or that a person makes in relation to other people in group movements. The movements thus become the expression of the soul in language, but at the same time they also express the artistic transformation of language: they become the expression of rhyme, the expression of rhythm, the expression of meter. So everything that lies in language is also expressed in this visible language. This is the art of eurythmy.

In our work, it is accompanied on the one hand by recitation and on the other by music. For what music puts into the tones is expressed by us through the movements. And the two arts appear as parallel arts.

Likewise, what is presented in the recitation is also expressed through the eurythmic art. However, for this to happen, the art of recitation must return to what it once was. Today, the art of recitation is in decline. Even that which is most admired in the art of recitation today is actually the most inartistic. That which is prosaic in language, the content of language, the narrative, is what is attempted today in the emphasis on the form of expression of the art of recitation. What we must attempt here is what, behind the mere content, should only be recognizable as a kind of register, lies behind this content in the treatment of language, in the actual artistic aspect of language. That is what we are concerned with here. Therefore, those who particularly love the art of recitation today will find something paradoxical in the way that recitation sometimes has to be done, especially in the art of eurythmy. Recitation cannot be done differently for eurythmy. And anyone who knows what ancient recitation was will also perceive this return to true recitation as a renewal, a reinvigoration of the artistic.

I need only remind you that when Goethe rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, he rehearsed with a baton, as he says, so that he emphasized the musicality that lies behind the outwardly prosaic. Goethe would have been horrified by what is called recitation today. I need only remind you that Schiller, before he had the content, the word content of a poem in his soul, first had something melodious in his soul, something wordless and melodious, felt the musical aspect first, only then found the words for it.

All these things must be taken into account if we want to go back to what ultimately still came from the time in which we recreated in the dance movements, but also in the human poetic language, that which is a universal law. And we would like to point this out again with our eurythmic art.

I would only ask you to be lenient with the presentation itself. For everything I have discussed here is more of an ideal towards which we are striving. We are more or less only at the beginning with what we have developed. But I must add that nothing in this eurythmic art is arbitrary. If you were to believe, for example, that any movement has more than a momentary connection with the inner soul movement, then you would misunderstand the eurythmic art. Everything that appears in this eurythmic art has an inner lawfulness, just as the lawfulness of tones in music is itself. The succession of eurythmic movements is such as the succession in melodious song is inner lawfulness.

If you see some pantomime, some gestures, some facial expressions, it is because we have not yet achieved the full perfection of our art that it should have. There should be no pantomime, no facial expressions, no gestures. When two people or two groups of people in completely different places perform one and the same eurythmic content, it is only as different as when two pianists play one and the same Beethoven sonata. Otherwise, what you will see on stage and what you will hear through the art of recitation is one and the same.

In this sense, I ask you to understand what we want to develop as a kind of Gesamtkunst, because if what is organically possible for a person to move can really be artistically developed, then it is truly the case that what can be applied to it is what is so beautifully expressed in Goethe's saying as a Goethean artistic attitude: When man has reached the summit of nature, he in turn produces an entire nature, taking order, harmony, measure and meaning together, in order to finally rise to the production of the work of art. And if Goethe was of the opinion that art is a manifestation of secret natural laws that would never be revealed without it, then it must be said that if one artistically embodies and reveals what is inherent in man himself in terms of secret natural laws, then a kind of summary, a kind of synthesis of the various arts, is indeed given. In eurythmy, one can perhaps feel what is so beautifully expressed in another of Goethe's words: “When nature reveals her secrets, one feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” Those who want to penetrate the secrets of the human organism – that is how one could describe it – feel a certain inner yearning to artistically reshape the range of movements in the human body.

These are all intentions. And I ask you to look at what you can already find developed in these intentions today with the same tolerance with which one looks at a beginning. Perhaps not everything has yet been understood in the way it should be understood. But if this artistic trend is taken into account by contemporaries, then there will certainly be the incentive to develop it. And we hope – we are our own harshest critics and we know full well that what we can offer at present is not yet completely satisfactory – but we hope that this art can be developed, either by us or probably by others, to such an extent that it can one day stand alongside other fully-fledged art movements as something fully legitimate.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

When you read or hear about those cultural endeavors that connect with or join our building, this Goetheanum, then you can actually always assume in this case that the opposite of what is said in the world is being striven for here. In fact, the aim here is to strive for that which is fundamentally the longing, the unconscious, instinctive longing of many people, in the most diverse branches of contemporary civilization and culture.

What we are able to present to you today is only a small, narrowly defined part of the whole of our cultural and spiritual endeavors of our time. Eurythmic art should not be seen as a dance art alongside other things that look similar to what is done here, but our eurythmic art should be something completely independent. It is, like all our striving, actually based on what I would call Goetheanism, Goethe's artistic attitude, Goethe's world view. Only we are not dealing with the Goethe who died in 1832. We leave it to those who want to deal with it more in a scholarly way. We are dealing, I would say, with the genius of Goethe, how he lives on and how he also lives in the early 20th century.

And what is to be presented here in our eurythmic art - albeit only in its beginnings, in first attempts - is the realization of Goethe's artistic view in a very specific field, in an artistic field that makes use of the human being's own movement potential as its means of art. An art of movement of the human organism in space is what underlies this. And if I am to express what the sources of this particular art form are, I will speak at first in seemingly theoretical terms, but only seemingly so.

Everything artistic should be immediately comprehensible to the aesthetic sense. All theorizing has no justification in the face of art. In direct observation, the beauty of some art must reveal itself. But what Goethe said, based on his artistic and ideological convictions, is true, deeply true: when nature begins to reveal its secrets to someone, they feel the deepest yearning for its most worthy interpreter, art.

And what is to be presented here directly through the human organism itself can best be explained by reminding you of the comprehensive idea of Goethe's metamorphosis. This idea of Goethe's metamorphosis is something that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated by our school of thought, by our intellectual life. This Goethean idea of metamorphosis will enable us to move from the science of the dead, in which we now find ourselves, to a real science of the living.

What can be called the Goethean idea of metamorphosis still appears simple today. The whole plant with all its complications, with all its complicated structures, whether it is a tree or a green foliage plant: for Goethe, everything that is a plant is a transformed leaf; whether it is a colored petal or a green leaf, for Goethe it is a whole plant. As I said, it still sounds very abstract and primitive today; but there is an enormous amount in this view that the organism in its complexity is a transformation of a single link in the organism, an enormous amount of future world view is in this.

Now, Goethe initially applied this only to the forms of the organism. We want to apply it to the artistic thought and the spiritualized one by applying it to human movement; and we assume that what the human larynx and its neighboring organs do when we listen to a person speaking, especially an artistically speaking person, that these are actually invisible movement patterns.

The one who is able to see such things, who is able to look at what does not reveal itself externally, but only to a spiritual faculty of perception, knows that there are movement patterns in the human larynx and its neighboring organs. We do not see them in ordinary life – we listen as these movement patterns produce the words and word combinations, the sounds and sound combinations. But it is possible to really see the movement systems of the larynx. You just need to remember the physical fact that when I speak here, the air is set in motion.

Imagine this movement being grasped and looked at, and you have a visible language. We try to reveal this visible language through our eurythmy by making the whole human being the larynx, that is, by moving the limbs in space as the limbs of the larynx want to move. And when we speak in the spoken language, it goes into the audible.

We want to place the person on the stage so that they move their arms and hands in the same way that the larynx is designed to move, or how the air is moved when we speak. That is to say, we try to make the whole person move in such a way that the larynx is transformed, just as Goethe looks at the whole plant as a transformed leaf. That is the source of our eurythmic art. So that everything you will see here in the movements of the individual person is the same movements that remain invisible only when one speaks. But other movements still come into consideration.

That which lies in human language is ensouled: joy and suffering, delight and pain, sorrow and enthusiasm, warmth of soul, and everything else that the soul contains, resonates through and vibrates our language. Rhythm and meter, artistic form – that is what the poet immerses language in. Just as language is artistically shaped in song, just as the human capacity for suffering is artistically shaped in song, so the poet artistically shapes language in a different way. Everything that runs through our speech as pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, warmth and enthusiasm, everything that vibrates through our speech from the soul, everything that sounds through our speech artistically, is expressed in the movements that the human being now makes in space, either alone or in relation to each other, when groups perform dance-like movements here on stage. What the human being does in relation to these movements of people in groups or alone is the basic principle.

I am only saying this to give you an indication of the source from which this eurythmic art draws. For everything that is performed in movement should have an immediate aesthetic effect. And this only comes about when we truly reveal the inner workings of nature in this way, when we seek it out, and then, by revealing the formative regularity of the world, the artistic and beautiful is truly expressed.

All arbitrariness is avoided in this eurythmic art. While you otherwise see all kinds of similar arts today, which connect a momentary gesture with some kind of soul movement or the like, there is no question of such pantomime or mime or such momentary gestures here, but everything is inwardly lawful as in the metamorphosis idea itself. Just as in music it is the moving tone and in language the moving sound, so here it is the moving of the human soul itself, that human soul that constantly wants to move in this way, only becomes still when it hears the tone of music, the tonal shaping, or when it hears the artistically shaped language.

So that one can say: There is so little that is arbitrary here that when two people or two groups of people in different places perform one and the same piece of poetry or one and the same piece of music in eurythmy, there is no more individual difference than when two pianists play one and the same Beethoven sonata in two different places, because the arbitrariness here is only individually limited. But there is an inner lawfulness in this visible language, which is eurythmy, just as in music, even in melody and harmony, there is an inner lawfulness that wants to be shaped, that wants to be grasped, that cannot be shaped arbitrarily in the moment.

If you therefore see something pantomime-like or mimetic in our performances today, it is only for the reason that today it may still be present - we are our own strictest critics - because our eurythmic art is only just beginning. Once it is fully developed, all that is arbitrary and mimic will be out, just as everything that is musically picturesque, all tone painting and the like, must and will be out as something dilettantish.

Now you will see, on the one hand, my dear audience, what is presented in the visible language of eurythmy, which you will simultaneously hear as pieces of music or also simultaneously hear as the recited poem. But it must also be considered that the art of recitation itself, which is supposed to accompany our eurythmic performances, that this art of recitation and declamation must go back to earlier good forms of recitation and declamation. It can be said, even if many people do not like it: the actual art of recitation is in decline today. The person reciting today actually only tries to bring out the prose element in many ways. He tries to express what lies in the content of the words through emphasis or warmth or the like.

One need only recall the better days of the art of poetry to feel that recitation must nevertheless take a different path, that today, to a certain extent, it has gone astray. I would like to remind you that Schiller, in most of his poetry, especially in those that speak most warmly to our souls, did not initially have the meaning of the words in his soul; the meaning of the words was not there at all at first. He had something melodious, something musical, and only to the music that lived in his soul did he find the meaning of the words to go with it. And then I would like to mention something else: when Goethe rehearsed his “Iphigenia” - even a dramatic poem - with his actors in Weimar, he rehearsed it with a baton like a conductor, just as one rehearses a piece of music.

So it was important to these true artists to seek the poetic, the recitative, not in the content, but in the form, in the rhythm, in the beat. This must also be the basis of recitation. Anyone who knows how the art of recitation was in primitive ages and still is among primitive people, at least quite recently, knows how justified this is. In such primitive ages, when this or that was recited in a simple way before villagers, one would like to say that , in a primitive eurhythmy, with a primitive movement of his entire human organism, the reciter walked up and down and expressed what lies in the form of language, on the one hand through the sound itself, on the other hand through the movement with which he accompanied it.

We shall only return to such things when we take a deeper look at the actual essence of culture, of intellectual culture and its connection to material culture. How many people today still know that in more primitive times, work was accompanied by rhythm; everything that was done, the work, was accompanied by rhythm. Everything that was done was accompanied by rhythm. In the culture of the past, work and rhythm belonged together.

We will try to do this first by bringing the present into relation with consciousness, by presenting poetry and recitation to accompany eurythmy, because we cannot do it any other way. We could not present our visible language of eurythmy and have it accompanied by poetry and recitation if we did not shape it in such a way that we do not arrive at the literal literal content of the prose, which is mostly popular today in the art of recitation, which has gone astray, but which is only the starting point for the actual artistic element. Instead, the main emphasis is on meter, rhythm, that is, on the truly artistic, on that which the poet lends to his language as a melodious element. The content is only the opportunity to express this actual artistic element.

So you will see – as I said, on the one hand, but central to our presentation – the art of eurythmic movement on the one hand accompanied by music, on the other hand the accompanying recitation and declamation. All three should only be the expression of one and the same. For this very reason, it is hoped that a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk can be achieved with this eurythmic art, because the human being is a kind of extract, a kind of essence of the whole universe in its conformity to law.

If we do not look at the laws of the world with our minds, but look at them with our capacity for contemplation, then we grasp the world artistically. But the human being is a real microcosm, a small world in itself. That which lives in him as a basis for movement, that which metamorphoses into art, must also have a truly artistic effect in the highest sense on any unbiased person. Therefore one can say: this eurythmy fulfills Goethe's artistic spirit. Goethe once put it so beautifully when he said: “For man, having been placed at the summit of nature, sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit within itself. To do this, he rises by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, harmony, order and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.”

And when man not only proceeds to produce another work of art, but elevates himself and makes himself a work of art, then the deepest secrets of the world must come to revelation in direct contemplation. And that must, in a sense, summarize what the most diverse arts in their various fields seek.

However, what we are able to offer you will have to be judged with leniency, my dear attendees, for we are only at the beginning of everything I have outlined here; perhaps it is only the attempt at a beginning. We are our own harshest critics and we know that what we have already developed must be taken further and further. But if our contemporaries have an understanding for new phenomena – but for real, not merely apparent new phenomena – if our contemporaries have an understanding for new phenomena, as this eurythmy is supposed to be, then we hope that – perhaps no longer through ourselves, but through others who will take our place – this eurythmic art will be developed to ever greater and greater perfection.

Much as we realize that today we can only give what we actually want to give inadequately, by leaning on Goethe's artistic attitude, which does not separate cognition and artistic perception completely, but sees something of real cognition in the artistic - the apprehension of things in visible and tangible forms - as we know that we can only give something very elementary in comparison to this progress today, but we do believe – and it is our deepest conviction – that something will develop from what has been started in our time with this eurythmic art, which will be able to stand alongside other fully justified arts as a fully justified newer art. In this sense, I ask you today to accept this attempt at a eurythmic presentation of something that is to be developed more and more fully.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Dear attendees!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[After the break:]

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

But they praise my Faust
and what else

— he means the first part of his “Faust”

In my works roars
In their favor

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by Steiner Online Library

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear attendees!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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