The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Public eurythmy performance in the presence of English friends

Dear attendees,

We would like to take the liberty of presenting a sample of what we call the eurythmic arts here. However, the art we are able to practice here is only just beginning. It is the attempt at the beginning of a new art. And so, just as everything that is striven for here in connection with this building, which is intended to represent our efforts in a certain sense, how everything here wants to tie in with what I would like to call Goetheanism, so this eurythmic art also wants to tie in with Goethe's artistic and world-view attitude. Just by saying this, I ask not to be misunderstood. It is not, so to speak, that which is to be linked to what has already emerged through Goethe, who died in 1832, but rather Goetheanism, which has been thrown into the evolution of humanity like a seed and which can produce the most diverse blossoms and fruits. We are not talking here about the Goethe of 1832, we are talking about the Goethe of 1919, about an evolved Goetheanism.

And an attempt has been made to educate this eurythmic art from the same meaningful, deep sources from which Goethe drew his worldview and his artistic endeavors, in line with the progress that the human spirit has made since then. And it is not to explain this art that I would like to speak these introductory words, because that which is art must explain itself, must reveal everything that is in it in the direct gaze for the aesthetic impression. But I would like to speak to you about the sources of what we call eurythmic art here. This eurythmic art makes use of the whole human being as a means of expression. It attempts to express all the possibilities of movement that are inherent in the human organism.

On the stage here before you, you will see people moving, groups of people moving. What is it that these people are meant to present? It is also a language, an inaudible, mute language. But it is not just a comparison that I use when I say that eurythmy should be a language, but it is the expression of a reality. When people speak in such a way that our spoken words become audible, then, spiritually speaking, two elements of the human being flow together in what we speak: from one side - I would say from the head side - the element of thought; and from the whole human being, the will element encounters this element of thought, which works through its organs – today this can also be proven physiologically. In every single word we speak, there is a revelation of the confluence of the element of thought with the element of will.

Now, when we listen to a spoken word, we first turn our attention through the ear to the tone, the sound, the sound context, and so on. But behind what reaches us as sound, as tone, as tone and sound relationships, in the vocal, in the musical and in the literal, lie the underlying possibilities of movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs, the tongue, the palate and so on. We do not pay attention to these movements. We simply hear the sound. Through a certain kind of looking – in the Goethean sense, one could speak of a sensual-supersensory looking – the one who enables himself to do so can perceive which movements, in particular which movement tendencies, underlie the spoken word. These movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs are to be grasped.

And from this knowledge of what really happens in the human being, through movements, when he speaks, the art of eurythmy has arisen from observation of this. In the training of this eurythmy, too, we have proceeded, if I may say so, in a Goethean way. You are familiar with – I do not want to theorize, but I just want to briefly mention an important principle of knowledge and art of Goethe – you are familiar with what is called the Goethean theory of metamorphosis. It has not yet been sufficiently appreciated today, because once its foundations are recognized, it will be the gateway to a meaningful world view that leads into the living. Goethe's view, if I am to express myself in popular terms, is that in every living thing, for example in plants, a single organ, the green leaf, is the simpler expression, the simpler revelation of the whole plant. And again, the whole plant is only the complicated expression of the individual leaf. And what Goethe applied only to form can be applied to the movements that find expression in an organism.

And it becomes particularly meaningful when this view is applied in such a way that one artistically brings out of the human being what is present in the whole human being in the way of movement. Something very interesting comes to light here. It turns out that the movements that can be perceived through the characterized sensory-supersensory vision as underlying our language can be transferred to the whole person. Just as the whole plant is morphologically, formally, a complicated development of the individual leaf, so can the whole person be moved in his limbs so that he becomes a living larynx. Then the whole human being performs that which otherwise remains invisible and unnoticed to us when we listen to speech.

On the one hand, you create a tool for an art. You create the whole human being as a tool for this eurythmic art. And since the same movements that the larynx and its neighboring organs make can be extracted from the whole human being, the whole human being becomes a visible expression of speech. When you consider that the human being, as he stands before us in his organization - in fact, you only have to look through him to see this - is a summary of all that is otherwise spread out in the whole universe that is accessible to us , then one recognizes that eurythmy uses as its instrument of expression the most complicated tool, the tool that contains the most secrets of the universe. By turning the whole human being into a larynx, one comes very close to what Goethe so beautifully characterized as his view of the relationship between man, nature and art, when he says: “When man is placed at the top of nature and feels himself to be this summit, he in turn produces a higher nature within himself, so that he finally elevates himself to the production of the work of art by combining measure, order, harmony and meaning.

But at the same time, something else is achieved. The essence of art lies in the fact that, by immersing ourselves in the work of art, we silence all understanding, all intellectual activity, everything that lives only in concepts and ideas. The more art contains ideas and concepts, the less it is art. If you bypass everything conceptual and imaginative and immerse the whole person in the revelation of nature's secrets, you come closer to excluding ideas, to the true weaving and reign of nature's secrets. Then this perception, this perception without ideas or concepts, and this immersion in things is precisely the artistic.

And working with such secrets of the universe, which cannot be grasped conceptually but only by immersing the whole human being in them, excluding the conceptual and the imaginative, can be achieved to the highest degree through eurythmy. For I have told you: in ordinary speech, two elements flow together, the thought element and the will element. By transferring the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs to the whole human being, so that one creates a mute language through this whole human being, one excludes precisely the thought element and the will element, which is rooted in the whole human being. This is then expressed through the movements that you see on stage. And so, on the one hand, you will see in the individual representations something like the whole human being as a moving larynx; you will see groups of people; you will also see movements of the individual human being in space, and the relationships of movement between the individual members of the groups.

If we shape the art of eurythmy as I have described, it becomes quite natural for us to want to express the warmth of soul, the enthusiasm, the joy and suffering, the delight and pain, the uplift and so on that flows through our words. Everything that flows and permeates the speech element more from the heart, so to speak, is expressed through the movements of the individual in space and through the movements of the groups, through the relationships of the groups among themselves, while the actual speech element, that is, that which lies in the sound and in the sequence of sounds, is expressed by the whole human being moving his limbs.

But this is what distinguishes what we are attempting here with eurythmy from all neighboring arts. We certainly do not want to compete with these neighboring arts, with the various types of dance. We are well aware that they are, of course, more perfect in their way than our eurythmy, which is only at the beginning of its endeavors. But it is something completely different. These arts create a connection between the gesture of movement and the soul, which is, so to speak, an instantaneous connection. But everything that can be expressed in this way through pantomime, through momentary gestures, is not what we strive for in our eurythmy. Just as speech itself is thoroughly lawful, just as the musical is lawful, so there is also a strict inner lawfulness in what we strive for in eurythmy. If something pantomime-like or mimic-like still comes through, it is still an imperfection and will be discarded later when the eurythmic art becomes more and more perfect.

Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary about it. If two people or two groups of people in different places were to present one and the same thing in eurythmy, no greater leeway would be allowed for individual interpretation than is allowed when two pianists present one and the same Beethoven sonata according to their own interpretation. Everything arbitrary is excluded. It is a lawful, silent language. Therefore, today, when of course not everyone can be present at the eurythmic as such, this eurythmic can be accompanied on the one hand by the musical, which is, after all, the expression of the same, but can also be accompanied by the recitation.

And it is precisely in recitation that it becomes clear how art finds its way to art when combined with eurythmy. You can't recite as it is popular to recite today. Today, when reciting, the unartistic element of poetry is particularly favored. Today, when reciting, a great deal of attention is paid to the fact that the content of the prose is expressed through the recitation. And that is also what one loves. This is the unartistic element. One feels this unartistic element when one remembers, firstly, how certain types, I would like to say of primitive recitation, have been emphasized in primitive cultures. Those of us who are older could still experience this in the countryside; we could see how the storytellers, as they traveled around, accompanied their tales with gestures that were very natural, not in the sense as one would call it today, but which were actually very similar to our eurythmic gestures, accompanied with such gestures, often with the whole body moving around, what they presented in the recitative.

And after all, it is not the content of prose that is the main basis of real poetry, but rather the rhythmic, the formal, the formal, the rhythmic, the lawful in the succession of the audible. When writing his most significant poems, Schiller did not begin with the literal content in mind, but rather had something vaguely melodious in his soul, and it was only later, when he added the literal content to this vaguely melodious quality, that the literal content was added. The formative process that underlies all real poetry should be felt everywhere. Most of the things we call poetry today are not really poetry. So much is written today that, in fact, ninety-nine percent too much is written. But eurythmy could not be used to accompany the art of recitation, which is so popular today and which pays particular attention to the literal content of prose.

So here we are trying to go back to the truly artistic in the art of recitation as well. Goethe, with the baton still in his hand like a conductor, rehearsed his “Iphigenia”, a dramatic poem, with his actors, looking at what lies at the heart of the truly artistic. The formal elements of the prose, the literal content, are not the basis for the truly artistic expression. And so it is particularly the case that what is otherwise expressed in poetry through the word, can be represented in its will element through the eurythmic art. You will therefore hear recitations of poems, and you will see these poems presented on stage in the silent eurythmic language.

I believe that Goethe's poems in particular demonstrate the validity of this eurythmic art. Today we will show you, for example, eurythmy performances for Goethe's cloud poems. Goethe also applied his metamorphic view - more externalizing it, but thereby precisely translating it into art - to the transforming cloud formations stratus, cumulus, cirrus, nimbus. Goethe has illustrated in beautiful verses how these cloud formations transform into one another, an insight that came to him when he read the cloud observer Howard. He wrote a very beautiful poem “To Howard's Honorary Memory”, which we will also present to you today in eurythmy. But especially when one has such poems by Goethe, in which it is so important to follow a process in nature in poetry with such forms that the process in nature wells up and surges in the rhythm and shaping of language, then one can also follow the poetry with the forms of eurythmy. And that is why I believe that Goethe's Cloud Poems are particularly suitable for beautifully expressing how eurythmy can be found to be completely adequate for expressing what can also be expressed poetically.

Now there is a poem by Goethe in which Goethe himself has expressed the whole nature of his metamorphic thought, his metamorphic feeling, in the poem “The Metamorphosis of Plants”. The whole poem lives in the presentation of form observation. From line to line, we actually have the feeling that we must not cling to the abstract idea, but that we must show ourselves obedient with our whole soul to the forms that surge and swell in the poet's imagination. And that is why the eurythmic presentation can be fully adapted to this particular poem of Goethe's about metamorphosis. And for today's performance, we have also tried to cast this poem by Goethe about the metamorphosis of plants in eurythmic forms. Especially where the poetry itself becomes like an imprint of the secrets of nature, directly created by the soul, the artistic development of human feeling reveals itself on the one hand, on the other hand, the possibility of presenting this artistic element in the way it can be presented when the whole human being is used, as I have indicated, as a kind of musical-linguistic instrument. Thus we can indeed penetrate deeply into the secrets of nature if we seek these secrets in this formal language, which we strive to reveal in eurythmy.

I only ask you to consider everything that we can present today, everything that we can currently offer as a sample of our eurythmic art, as a beginning, perhaps as an attempt at a beginning. We are our own harshest critics, even in relation to what we can already do today. However, we are also convinced that if what is alive in the attempt at a new art is further developed, either by ourselves or probably by others – and there are many, many possibilities for development in this – then this eurythmic art will certainly be able to present itself as a fully-fledged art form alongside other fully-fledged art forms. As I said, we are being modest in what we can offer today, and I therefore ask you to also accept what we will present to you with indulgence as the beginning of a new art form.

Dear attendees!

As always before these performances, I would like to take the liberty of saying a few words today, first about our eurythmic art, for those of the honored audience who were not present at earlier performances.

Goethe said of his artistic sensibilities: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he feels himself to be a whole nature, bringing forth a higher nature from within himself by extracting order, measure, harmony and meaning from all phenomena and ultimately rising to the production of the work of art. It is out of this spirit, out of true Goetheanism, that our eurythmic art was born. I do not wish to give you a theoretical discussion in these few words, for it is self-evident that something truly artistic needs no explanation but must commend itself and be understood directly in the act of presentation. But the way in which an attempt is being made here to create an art form must be discussed in order to be understood.

They will show all kinds of movements performed by people and groups of people. You will see the way individuals within the groups relate to one another. All the movements that appear are born out of the human organism and the interaction between people. They are not contrived or arbitrary in any way, but are a real, silent language.

The development of this art is based on a deeper - to use Goethe's expression - [sensual-transcendental insight into the human being and its connection with the world. With such a sensory-supersensory insight into the human being, one can recognize which lawful movements the human larynx and its neighboring organs carry out when a person reveals the sounding, audible language or singing of himself. It is precisely those things to which we do not pay attention when we listen to spoken language, the internal movement and especially the movement patterns, that have been studied here according to Goethe's principle of metamorphosis, according to which what is formed or takes place in one organ system can be transferred to other organ systems or to the whole organism. According to this deeply significant law of Goethe's metamorphosis, what otherwise underlies movements or the potential for movement is quite naturally transferred to human speech, [via] the movements of the limbs of the human being in the world. And this is precisely how the possibility arises that the sight of such a mute language must have an artistic effect. For what is the artistic in human beings actually based on? It is based on the fact that we receive impressions of the life of nature and of human beings without the abstract imagination, or imagination at all, mixing into these impressions.

In ordinary language – even when expressed poetically – two elements of the human organism are embodied: on the one hand, the element of thought, which in more advanced, civilized language has already taken on a strongly conventional character, and on the other hand, the more subconscious will element, the emotional element, is at the root of it. If one can eliminate the thought element from speech, which crystallizes into the tone of the heard language and thus does not allow the heard language to be completely artistic, then one achieves something that can be believed to be particularly artistic. And so all the movements of speech are transferred to the human limbs; but only the will element is incorporated. The human being as a whole expresses itself, not through sharp gestures as in other dance or similar arts, but the human being as a whole expresses itself in a lawful way.

Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing merely pantomime or mimic in this eurythmy. If two people or groups of people in completely different places express one and the same piece of poetry or one and the same piece of music through this formal language of eurythmy, there is no more individuality in the two different performances than there is in the performance of one and the same Beethoven sonata by two different pianists. All arbitrariness is avoided. There are inner laws in the sequence of movements that could not be otherwise, because they are derived from the essence of nature itself. Just as the harmony and melody of music have an inner lawfulness, so here everything that is revealed in the movements has an inner, musical lawfulness. We are dealing here with a visible musical art.

Thus you will find many things presented in two ways, either at the same time through music and eurythmy or through recitation and eurythmy. In this, recitation must return to its old, good element, where it is not cultivated only for its prosaic, literal content, as it is today, but for the rhythmic, the measured quality of the sound, which is what actually constitutes the artistry of the poem. For what is felt today as poetry is not, in the first instance, the actual artistry of the poetry, but the prose content of the poem. It is the formal, the rhythmic, the metrical that underlies it, and an inner lawfulness of the essence of the world is revealed.

In the second part, we will present Christmas plays today and tomorrow, today a Paradise Play.

We resumed these plays several years ago. I can say that I myself have a very close connection with the revival of the plays in our family. It is now almost forty years since I became acquainted with these plays through one of the men who has rendered the greatest service to their collection, through my revered friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer. Schröer was one of the first to collect these games together with Weinhold, Schröer in particular. While Weinhold collected them in Silesia, Karl Julius Schröer collected them in the Oberufer region near Pressburg [Bratislava], where Germans had advanced towards the parts of European territories where other languages were spoken as a result of emigration from more western European areas.

The Hungarian countryside is permeated by old German colonists: in Transylvania, where the Saxons settled, in the Banat, where the Swabians came from the areas around Lake Constance, in Alsace, in what is now southern Württemberg, in northern Switzerland – numerous colonists moved into the areas of northwestern Hungary. And they brought with them those Christmas plays, those Bible plays, which were performed in their original form in the German motherland until the 16th century, and later only remained in a few places, fairly unnoticed by the educated world. In the colonies, especially in the Oberufer region, near the island of Schütt, near Pressburg, the practice of playing these Christmas games in a dignified manner every year around Christmas time has become established and was preserved until the forties, fifties and even sixties of the last century. And when they began to disappear from the scene, Karl Julius Schröer collected these Christmas games in the Hungarian region of Oberufer.

It is extremely interesting to observe these Christmas plays. They provide cultural-historical evidence of the way in which Christianity was actually introduced in Europe in centuries past, and how it affected the entire spiritual life of the people. Schröer had still observed it himself, and we often talked about these things, and he told me with what dignity, with what inner participation the people celebrated these Christmas games. They were well preserved by particularly select farmers in the village concerned, by particularly respected people. They were passed down from father to son, from son to grandson, and were held sacred; they were not easily shared with outsiders. It took a great deal of effort for Karl Julius Schröer to get them out. But, as I said, it was already the dawn of this play for the German colonists in Hungary.

When October, the harvest season, approached, the person who was considered the master of the arts in these farming and working-class areas – these were mostly extremely poor communities even back then, these German communities in Hungary – he gathered the local boys he considered most worthy, and he rehearsed these Christmas plays with them. The dignity with which this was done may be gathered from the fact that, under strict disciplinary laws, those who were allowed to participate were not allowed to leave during the entire period of the play. This is expressly prescribed for those who were allowed to participate: that they are not allowed to go to the pub or indulge in any other debauchery during the entire time. During the whole time, that meant a lot: it was immediately after the grape harvest was over that one was not allowed to get drunk. Anyone who somehow violated these rules was immediately dismissed.

All the roles were played by young men. The old custom of not allowing women to participate in comedy plays, including sacred comedies, was still in place, although the educated world had long since abandoned it. However, it was still preserved and noticeable at these festival plays. And from this one can see how ancient and sacred customs have been preserved in the performance of these plays. So tomorrow, for example, we will perform a play for you, a pastoral play, in which the Rhine is mentioned, from which one can see how these plays were originally, at least as late as the sixteenth century, were performed near Lake Constance. These things take us back, I would say, to the sixth century, so that we have before us the living out of Christian life as if it were happening right in front of us.

To present something like this, I would say, as a directly revealing story to the contemporary world, that is what we would like to make our task. Now that everything that is cultural life has become so sober, so dry and so abstract, now is the time to go back to such things, which, in directly vivid imagery, by raising the old into the present, transport us back into the becoming, into the development of humanity.

Of course, since we are not dealing with trained actors, I would ask you to receive this performance, as well as the eurythmy performance itself, as one of our modest attempts. We ourselves believe that what our eurythmy art has become today is only a beginning. It is indeed a supreme artistic aspiration to apply the human being as an instrument in art, not the violin, not the piano, not the trumpet, but the human being. Especially when you consider how all the laws of nature are somehow in action in the speaking human being, then you will know how to appreciate the ideal on which eurythmy is based. But it is only just beginning. We are our own harshest critics, and so I ask you to please be very indulgent as you take it all in.

It should also be mentioned that the eurythmy performance will include not only individual pieces but also the Norwegian “Dream Song of Olaf Ästeson”. It comes from the oldest Nordic folk myth that can be expressed artistically; it was rediscovered when, alongside the Statsmäl [Riksmäl], the Landsmäl of the old Norwegian language, the popular Norwegian language, was cultivated. This dream song, this Traumlied, gave the impression of genuine Norwegian folklore, and with the help of friends in high places, I tried to express in our present language that which leads back to ancient European-Nordic times in this poem.

I would like to say that this “Dream Song” expresses a very popular worldview, a worldview that is particularly loved in those cultures that have developed on the one hand in the particularly shaped way of life in Norway and in the influence of the neighboring cultures. I would say that here, too, we can see into the depths of human feeling – especially in the way that the relationship between Nordic, clairvoyant paganism and the Christianity that was spreading there flows into one another here in the 'Dream Song'. What has emerged from the confluence of these two world currents, taken up as an elementary, original folklore and its worldviews, is actually enshrouded in mystery in this “Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson”.

Dear attendees!

In the first part of our presentation today, we will take the liberty of introducing you to eurythmy. And since I may well assume that not all of you have been to previous performances in which I have discussed the essence of our eurythmic art, I would like to take the liberty of at least saying a few words about the essence of our eurythmic art today.

It is not, in fact, something that could be compared with some other dance or the like that appears similar on the surface. Rather, with eurythmy, we are inaugurating a truly new art form. It is born out of what we here call the Goethean view of art, the feeling for art, which is, however, intimately connected with the whole of the Goethean world view. I do not want to be detailed today, but just hint at what it is about with a few sentences.

You will see movements performed by individuals; you will see groups of people in positions in relation to each other, performing group movements in relation to each other. What are these movements meant to achieve, whether they are performed purely by the human organism and its limbs or by groups of people? What are these movements meant to achieve? What do these movements mean?

They are not arbitrary gestures. Everything that is mere pantomime, that is facial expression, that is momentary gesture, is strictly forbidden in this eurythmic art. It is absolutely a matter of something that is internally lawful. Just as one has an inner lawfulness in music, in harmony and melody, and as it is actually unmusical to form something out of mere tone painting, so too in our eury thmy is not about creating random connections between a movement and soul content, but rather it is also about a kind of lawfulness in the sequence of these movements, about a musical element, about a linguistic element. It is about having a mute language in front of you in this eurythmic art. And this is how this mute language came about: by directing our attention, with the help of sensory-supersensory observation, to aspects of human, especially artistic, speech that we would otherwise not take into account when we simply listen to the spoken language. We focus our attention on the sound.

Now you only need to consider that, by speaking to you here, I am setting the air in motion. This movement is, of course, only a continuation of the movement that already exists in the larynx and its neighboring organs. This wonderful organization, which is the basis for speech, can be studied. And then what otherwise takes place as a hidden movement or half or fully executed movements in the larynx and its neighboring organs can be transferred to the whole person, so that the whole person becomes a moving larynx, that is, a means of expression for a mute language.

It is generally inadvisable to first explain what art is. I do not want to do that either. I want to point out that this eurythmic art must reveal itself through the direct impression that aesthetic enjoyment makes on aesthetic perception. But it can also do so because something is taken out of the linguistic element that has long since grown beyond the artistic and into the conventional in ordinary heard language, especially in our civilized language contexts.

In our sounding language, I would say, the thought from the head and the will from the whole person work together. Now, in art, it is precisely the essence that through this art, to the exclusion of imagination, we come to understand the thought, to move the will. In eurythmy, we switch off the ideas. We set in motion, through the human limbs, what is otherwise performed by the larynx and its neighboring organs, the human will. In a mute language, the whole person expresses himself as a being of will.

So you see this mute language on the stage as eurythmy, accompanied either by music – which then expresses the same thing through the musical tone, through the musical art – or accompanied by recitation, which in turn expresses in language (in audible language) what is revealed in mute language through eurythmy. In this case, the recitation must follow the eurythmy. And that is why it must go back to the older, better art forms of recitation, which took more account of the artistic aspect, of what is underlying in terms of meter, rhythm and, in general, the formal aspects of poetry. Today, recitation is more often based purely on the prosaic content. For some people, it is still somewhat strange that what is otherwise made visible in moving limbs through eurythmy can be heard in the recitation itself in the way that poetry is treated by the reciter when he accompanies eurythmy.

We will show you individual poems through the art of eurythmy, and then we will present a longer poem, a Norwegian dream song - “Olaf Åsteson”. This Norwegian dream play is in itself something extraordinarily interesting. It was rediscovered when special interest in Norway turned to the vernacular, which is called the “Landsmäl” in contrast to the language in Norwegian areas called “Statsmäl” [Riksmäl], which is now more cultivated. This Landsmäl is like an old folk book, and it contains something like this dream song of “Olaf Åsteson”. It evidently goes back to very early times, when the Norwegian spirit created that which moved its soul life, in which, on the one hand, old Nordic, clairvoyant paganism still existed, which was interspersed with Christianity, and how these old Nordic ideas merged with the deeply felt inner understanding of Christianity. This is what we encounter in this poem 'Olaf Åsteson', a truly wonderful folk poem. With the help of Norwegian friends who speak the Landsmäl, I then tried to render this dream song in our language, in the way in which it is to appear before you today as the basic text of a eurythmy performance.

And thirdly, we will present a Christmas play about shepherds, one of those Christmas plays that really take us back, I would say, to the Christian education of earlier centuries. The Christmas play presented here was discovered by my esteemed teacher, Karl Julius Schröer, with whom I discussed these matters a great deal at the time – it was almost 40 years ago – and so my love for these matters arose even then. Out of this love, we have been trying to renew these things again, especially within the anthroposophical movement, for several years and to present them to the public today.

This Christmas play was last performed among the German colonists of western Hungary, in the Pressburg area, in the Oberufer area, near Schütt Island. And the interesting thing is that this and similar Christmas plays – Schröer collected them for Hungary, Weinhold for Silesia, they were collected at the very time when they were already dying out – the interesting thing is that they were brought by the German colonists into the 16th century, who had advanced from more western regions into Slavic and Hungarian regions, that they were brought by them and that they survived among them in their original form.

Every time the corresponding times of the year came around, these plays were prepared and performed with great solemnity. There is something extremely touching about remembering how the people in the village, these devious poor Germans – that is how they could be described – in the 40s, 50s, 60s years, when Karl Julius Schröer collected the Christmas plays there, there was something touching about the way these people introduced the Christmas plays, these performances that took place every year around Christmas time. When the grape harvest was over, the person in charge of the matter in the village gathered the most well-behaved boys around him. These Christmas plays were only entrusted to the one - they were not printed at that time, but in manuscript from father to son and grandson they propagated -, so the one who was entitled to it in agreement with the priest of the respective place chose the worthy boys.

It is precisely in this respect that an old custom for theatrical performances has been preserved. These contained strict rules. This in particular shows the attitude from which something like this was presented. These boys were not allowed to stay in the inn all the time. These boys were obliged to lead a moral life throughout the whole time, they were not allowed to transgress the promise during the whole time in which the plays were rehearsed and performed, not to offend the authority of their teacher who rehearsed these plays for them, and so on and so on.

They started with a great solemnity. And then, by first making a procession in the village, in the place, and gathering in a tavern hall, these Christmas games were presented to the people. It shows us - as you will have the opportunity to hear shortly afterwards - how these Christmas games came from further west. You will hear about the sea and the Rhine in the introduction, in the so-called “Star Song”. Of course, these were not present in the Oberufer region, where these plays were last found. When the “sea” is mentioned, Lake Constance is meant; when the Rhine is mentioned, it is because these plays originally existed in a region along the Rhine. The people migrated eastward and took it with them, while education in western countries suppressed it, so that at most it was still maintained in secret by these German colonists until the mid-19th century, faithfully preserved, to perform these things in old piety. In this way we can see deeply into the way in which Christianity educated the people of Central Europe. We see it as our task not only to study external history in order to understand the development of humanity, but also to present history to contemporary humanity in such a way that it comes to life.

Furthermore, I ask you to bear in mind that we know full well that our eurythmic art is only in its infancy. It will be perfected and will then be able to stand alongside the other art forms. But today I ask you to take eurythmy with indulgence, it is a beginning. Likewise, I ask you to understand our performance of the Christmas play in such a way that we do not have fully trained actors, but that it is about capturing a cultural-historical phenomenon.

Please be content with what we are able to offer! We appeal to your forbearance. However, we believe that the goodwill shown towards eurythmy from many sides and the cultural-historical interest in this Christmas play justify the performance.

“May Song” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Fairy Tale of Loving and Hating“ from
The Portal of Initiation by Rudolf Steiner
“Swallows” by Christian Morgenstern
“To the New Year” by Eduard Mörike with a musical prelude by Leopold van der Pals
“The Fairy Tale of Imagination“ by Rudolf Steiner
“The Plants are Sprouting” saying by Rudolf Steiner
“The Metamorphosis of Plants“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Forgotten Thunder” by Christian Morgenstern Wave opener with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Lark” by Robert Hamerling
“Ecce Homo“ by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Soul Calendar (40.) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Soul Calendar (41.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Schwellengang” Bertha von Polzer-Hoditz
“Hellas“ by Manfred Kyber
“Salome” by Manfred Kyber

Dear attendees!

Before we begin with this eurythmic presentation, please allow me, as always, to say a few words in advance, not so much to explain what you are about to be presented with as a eurythmic art form, but rather to point out the sources of this new eurythmic art.

This eurythmic art has indeed been created out of different artistic sources than some of the neighboring arts, which could easily be confused with it. This eurythmic art is a kind of silent language. But this has nothing to do with a reproduction of random gestures or with any kind of ordinary pantomime or similar representation, let alone with a dance art. Rather, it is about tapping into special artistic sources by making particular use of the human being himself, with his inner possibilities of movement, as a means of artistic expression. The underlying view that is used here is based entirely on what I would like to call Goetheanism, on Goethe's view of art and Goethe's artistic attitude. Only one will have to admit more than is actually present, set, and existing, of which one would not like to admit such today.

So, my dear attendees, everything that is connected with the human vocal organs, the larynx and its neighboring organs, is basically a replica of the whole human being as a lawful organism in a remarkable way. One might say that all of the human organ systems are found in the larynx and its attachment organs, only in a cartilaginous form. The strange thing is that the organs of the larynx do not continue in muscle tissue like other human organs of movement, but that what arises from the human larynx in terms of movement possibilities, in terms of the beginnings of movement, passes directly into the surrounding air and thus produces sound and speech. But the person who has the opportunity to observe in a sensory and supersensory way, in which movements the human larynx produces that which becomes song for us, that which becomes language for us, becomes for us language, is able to transfer these movements, which are otherwise carried out by the larynx and its neighboring organs without our noticing them while we listen to speech, to the whole human being.

This transfer is interesting for the reason that it is clear to the sensory-supersensible observer to a certain extent how the entire relationship of a being to the surrounding nature and to its own form appears in the vocal cords of a being. Anyone with an intuitive mind will easily see in the roar of the predators a certain imitation of the shape of the predators and, in particular, of the movement of the predators, as this movement arises from the muscular system. And who would not see with a corresponding sensory-supernatural gift of observation how the song of birds, the sound change of the bird, is a wonderful expression of the movement of the bird on the waves of the air itself.

On the other hand, one can observe how certain bird species express their sound changes, their song structure, in accompanying movements. When one studies such things properly, one comes to be able to transfer what would otherwise remain invisible in the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs to visible movements of the whole human organism, so that one can indeed evoke a kind of mute language through it. Only the organ of expression for this mute language is the whole human being. And so, as you then see the moved person in front of you in human movements that are carried out by the limbs of the person themselves, movements that are carried out by the person in space, movements that come about because people in a group in certain spatial relationships and the like – all this is no more arbitrary than the succession of melodies or the harmony of chords in music is arbitrary. It is music that takes place in space through movement. And if two people or two groups of people in different places were to perform one and the same thing in eurythmy, there would be no more individuality in these different performances than there is between two pianists playing one and the same sonata in their own way. So any arbitrariness in the play of gestures and so on is completely excluded here. What you will still see of this can only be attributed to the imperfections that still cling to our eurythmic art.

When we consider how the human being – especially the speaking human being – is actually an expression of an entire universe, it must be said that the very fact that we use the whole human being here as we would any other musical instrument, that we use the whole moving human being here as a means of expression for an art, In this way, the Goethean sense of what Goethe so beautifully says about man becoming artistic is fulfilled: when man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn feels like a whole nature and brings forth a new nature from within. He takes order, measure, harmony and meaning together and ultimately rises to the fullness of the work of art. In order to produce a work of art, he must rise to the level of significance when he uses his own organism as an instrument, as a means of artistic expression. We believe that, although this eurythmic art is only a beginning, it can provide a starting point for a meaningful art form. What has been attempted here will develop more and more.

Now, on the stage, you will see this silent language of eurythmy accompanied on the one hand by music and on the other by recitation. For that which our speech expresses through poetry can be expressed through eurythmy, albeit more through the rhythmic arts. We must only be clear about the fact that through the movements that are otherwise shaped for the air when the larynx performs them – that these movements, which otherwise take place with greater speed, take place with a certain slowness, because these movements are transferred to the muscles and the whole human organism is used as a movement apparatus. So that even in the speed of the movements, what naturally results from transferring what would otherwise be carried out in one organ in the larynx to the whole human being must be taken into account.

In the recitation that will follow, you will notice a somewhat different approach to the art of recitation than you are otherwise accustomed to – especially in the present day. What can be brought out of poetry through the art of eurythmy is, after all, what is truly artistic. We need only recall how Goethe, even when he rehearsed his dramas, his Iphigenia, with his actors, did so with the baton in his hand – not as one today believes that the main thing lies in reciting the prosaic, in bringing out the content in particular. Rather, these still very artistic natures of Goethe's time – we find something similar in Schiller, something similar in Herder – they knew that the rhythmic, the formal, which underlies the shaping of speech, is the actual element of poetry and that this must be taken into account first and foremost when reciting.

Thus, in our art of recitation, we try to practise an invisible eurythmy in the way we speak, I would say, to treat language in such a way that the lines are contained in the sounds, which you would otherwise see visibly as the moving human being on the stage. But you also see, my dear audience, that it is precisely through the eurythmic, which is to be practiced here in particular, that it is necessary to go back to the elements of the artistic, which today, more or less, are given less consideration, especially in the art of the time. Sometimes today we believe we are being very artistic, but we are not artistic at all if we do not really base art on the formal as the spatial-temporal, the movement-related, if we do not take into account what but] that which also underlies prose to the fore in poetry as well and actually sets up the art of recitation as if one wanted to communicate a content, not an inner movement.

We believe that it is precisely through such performances that the artistic can be particularly pointed out to our time. Otherwise, I ask you to take this performance with a grain of salt, because I keep emphasizing that this eurythmic art is still in the early stages of its development. But we are also convinced that it can be perfected and that if it is driven by us or probably by others from its beginning, in which it now stands, to ever greater and greater perfection - there are many possibilities for development in it - then it will be able to present itself as a fully fledged art alongside other arts that are older.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words about our eurythmic performance, not to explain what is to be presented, because an artistic work must evoke the direct impression for which it is intended through its own content. Of course, an art that requires explanation cannot be a true art. But here we are opening up a new source of art. And just as it would be ridiculous today to precede a concert with an introduction, it will also be ridiculous in the future when we are convinced from the corresponding cultural period, which is the source of this eurythmic art, to precede a eurythmic presentation with such an introduction. Today, however, the art of eurythmy is still in its infancy, and it is necessary to talk about the special nature and essence of the sources from which it draws.

Above all, what you will see on stage is a silent language, a language whose medium is the moving human being himself. You will see movements that are executed by the human limbs, that are executed by the fact that the human being executes movements in space, by the mutual positions of people in groups and so on and so forth. Now the question is how these movements can become a real language and then an artfully designed language.

You are able to do this, dear attendees, because the lawful connection that exists between what is revealed in audible speech and the whole being of the human being can indeed be found, but only if one delves deeper into what I would like to call here: Goethe's view of art, Goethe's artistic attitude. The person who, to use this Goethean expression, can use sensuous-supersensuous observation to place himself in the essence of the human form and the movements that are inherent in the human form as an organism, can know that the organization of the larynx, and how this organization is connected with neighboring organs, contains, so to speak, a repetition of everything that is present in the other organs of the whole human being, so that this organization tends towards the movements.

But also otherwise, when we study the nature of the sounds that you can make, we find a connection between the formation and especially between the way in which these sounds are placed in the world, and between the production and transformation of sounds. The one who truly possesses the gift of perceiving with both the senses and the supersenses will intuitively see a connection between the structure and, in particular, the movements as they reveal themselves from the entire muscle system, say, in the case of predators and their roar. Or one will intuitively discover an intimate connection between the way a bird sails on the waves of the air and the kind of intense inner movement that comes to expression in its tone production and tone transformation. If one studies this mysterious connection between movement and tone production in nature, one can also extend such a study to the human being. And then one penetrates ever further and further into that which really lives far below the threshold of ordinary consciousness: into the connection between human movement and audible speech. One can study the movement of the larynx, the tongue, the palate and so on and so on. You can study how these movements are transmitted to the vibrations of the air – as I speak here, the air is in motion. You can then study how everything else that a person can do can become an expression of a similar kind, just as sound becomes an expression of human soul experiences.

In our audible speech, two things flow together: thoughts, as it were, from the head, and will from the whole human being. The fact that thoughts come from the head makes our speech somewhat inartistic. For the artistic is all the more profound the less it has content of thought, the more we penetrate directly into the secrets of things, without the mediation of thought. But if we omit the element of thought from audible speech, we come more and more to understand how speech is based on the movement potentialities contained in the human vocal organ. Then we can transfer this to the mobility that exists in the whole human organism. In this way, when we bring movement and mobility into the human being to such an extent that these movements of the whole body reveal something similar to the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs, the whole human being, or a group of people, becomes a living, moving larynx.

You see, that is what is attempted in eurythmy: not inventing arbitrary gestures that are somehow assigned to some soul moods or soul feelings — that would only be an arbitrary , but inwardly lawful movements, which are expressed in a gesture-like way, but such gestures that do not depend on the individual human consciousness, but that come deeply from the subconscious, from what is universally human, not from the individual human being. Therefore, when two people or groups of people in two places perform the same thing in eurythmy, the individual interpretation can only be of significance to the extent that two pianists in different places play the same music. Anything arbitrary, anything pantomime-like or mimic-like is excluded here. Just as music is based on the inner progression of melody or harmony, so here everything is based on the inner laws of movement, which are drawn from human nature itself, in that the movement of one organ – the larynx or its neighboring organs – is transferred to the whole human being and a silent, lawful language takes the place of audible speech.

All this makes it possible for you to see here, on the one hand, a stage presentation in silent language, in eurythmy, poetry or music. The music will be performed alongside the eurythmy – or poetry in recitation. However, for this to happen, the recitation must be specially arranged. And that is why there will be just as much opposition today to the kind of accompanying recitation as there is to eurythmy itself.

For today one has a special preference, I would say for a kind of prosaic recitation, which one wants to shape into beautiful recitation, whereby one particularly emphasizes the inner literal meaning when reciting. This is not the actual artistic element, this prosaic quality of the content. The actual artistic element of the poetry is precisely the inner, intense movement that is depicted outwardly for the eye in eurythmy. But then the accompanying recitation in eurythmy must also particularly emphasize this element of the rhythmic. That this is justified in relation to poetry can be seen from the fact that, for example, a real poet like Schiller — today, of course, 99% of what poets write is not really poetry, as we shall see later. - a real poet like Schiller did not first have the literal content in his soul when his poems were created, but he had a kind of melodious experience in his soul, and the literal content only arose from it. Just because people today believe that they are being very artistic – although in truth this is not very much represented in our education of the mind today – the truly artistic feeling for poetry does not rest on the content of a poem, but on the rhythmic, on the formal, on what is behind it. Goethe rehearsed his Iphigenia with a baton, in the same way as an orchestra is rehearsed, although it was a play and not poetry.

In this way, eurythmy will in turn have a fruitful effect on artistic perception in other fields as well. Today we will attempt to show you a series of poems in a eurythmic presentation, which perhaps particularly lend themselves to this eurythmic presentation because they have already been felt to such an extent that that inner eurhythmy is already in them, or because they are so faithfully modeled on nature, as for example Goethe's 'Metamorphosis of Plants' is, that eurhythmy arises of its own accord. That is the peculiar thing: With poor poetry, eurythmy will not easily follow; but with poetry that is artistically felt from the outset – for which, however, our time has very little feeling – eurythmy will be able to follow. In particular, if they are what I would like to call nature impressions, which in creation presupposes a real going along of the human soul with nature.

And so I have tried to show you the sources of our eurythmy. What I have set out will make it clear how the actual instrument of representation in the eurythmic art is the human being itself, a musical, linguistic instrument of an extraordinary kind. For in this way we achieve what Goethe so beautifully expressed as a fundamental artistic sentiment in his observations to Winckelmann: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself as a whole nature that has to produce a summit within itself again. To do this, he rises to the challenge by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.

How can a person rise to the production of a work of art when he regards his own organism as an artistic instrument! But all that is intended by this is only just beginning. And as much as we are convinced that this beginning will experience a significant perfection more and more, we are still the strictest judges today and know that we are at the very beginning. And so I would ask you to be indulgent in your judgment of what we are able to present to you today, even though we are convinced that eurythmy, once it has been perfected by us or by others, will be able to stand as a fully-fledged art form alongside other, older art forms.

Das Märchen vom Quellenwunder by R. Steiner with music by Leopold van der Pals
“The Fisherman“ by J. W. v. Goethe, followed by ‘Poissons d'or’ by C. Debussy
“The Forgotten Thunder” by Christian Morgenstern
“Swallows” by Christian Morgenstern
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (41st) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (42nd) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (43rd) by Rudolf Steiner
“Mahomet's Song“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman Prelude “Planetary Dance”

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words today, as always, before these eurythmy performances. There are two reasons for this: Firstly, because a new art form that is really only at the beginning of its work needs a certain justification, and secondly, because it is necessary to say something about the sources of artistic creation that underlie this completely new art form. I will not use the words that I want to say beforehand in the sense that they should be an explanation of what is to be presented. That would not be appropriate for artistic matters, because artistic matters should not require any explanation but should work through direct vision and direct impression. These words are only prefaced in order to speak about the sources of what appears here as the eurythmic art.

Like everything we want to do here at the Goetheanum to incorporate it into modern spiritual life, we can also call what we are trying to do with the art of eurythmy Goetheanism, in the sense that it is drawn from a truly Goethean conception and ethos of art. What is being attempted could be described, if one wanted to characterize it in general terms, as a kind of silent language. It is a language that is not produced by the larynx and its neighboring organs, as is the case with ordinary, heard language, but rather by the whole human organism, by the movement systems present in the human being, which are simply brought out of the organism. But this does not happen in an arbitrary way, not in the way that those random gestures and facial expressions that human beings so often reveal are used. Rather, an attempt is made to draw a new kind of language from the being of the human being himself – indeed, from the being of the whole human being – a language that can be elevated by its special nature to the artistic.

We know, of course, that in poetry, language, the heard language, initially serves as a means of expression. However, if our present age did not feel so unartistic, one would feel that, with all the magnificent things that poetry can create through language, language as such – which has completely different tasks in life than realizing artistic things – language as such actually impairs the directly artistic.

Languages, especially our cultured, literary languages, are often riddled with conventional elements; they are also riddled with expressions that stem purely from human selfishness. That which we want to convey to others or receive from others, and which is always at the same time a means of expression for an egoistic, for an immediately egoistic, human impulse, is just as much of the artistic essence that is taken away from the actual motif that the poet wants to express through language. Those who feel directly artistically can actually say the following. He can say to himself: In all poetry there is really only as much that is truly artistic as on the one hand resonates through the language in a musical way and on the other hand is shaped and plastic and thus also resonates through the language. For the artistic is never actually to be found in the realm where thoughts operate, and our conventional language is basically an expression of thoughts. Therefore, the more the poetic element leans towards the musical pole, the more the musical, rhythmic, melodious resonates through the language, so that the actual content of the language actually demands less interest than what pulses through the content of the language as a musical wave. On the other hand, in the case of poetically gifted individuals such as Goethe, the plastic element of language is more strongly expressed: that which gives form, that which we seek to bring out in eurythmy.

All artistic activity, ladies and gentlemen, goes fundamentally beyond the ordinary experience of the soul. One might say that there is a layer above the usual soul experience or a layer below the usual soul experience. What is expressed in the art of eurythmy relates to the usual, everyday soul experience – if I may use a comparison – in roughly the opposite way that a dream relates to this usual soul experience.

Take the dream, I mean the healthy dream, where you do not rage, where you do not move your limbs, but where you live in the ideas, in the images. Everything that moves in a dream is only an appearance, is only pictorial, is not there in reality. The person is at complete rest, and only the moving life is imagined. I would like to say: everything is filtered out of ordinary life in dreams and transferred into the realm of imagination, into the pictorial. Thus, the dream life lies beneath the higher soul life as if in an underlayer. Man is not completely at his human height when he dreams. He is least at his human height when he daydreams in the waking life. But the more egotistical he becomes, the more of a dreamer he becomes – as paradoxical as that may sound. Certain sophisticated egotisms in human nature, in particular, delight in transforming life into a kind of dream, in dreaming through life. And false mystical directions see something special in being able to introduce the dream into life. They have no idea that in so doing they are pushing the human being down into the subhuman: the dream, and also dreaming in ordinary waking life, is a down-tuning of life.

The opposite takes place in eurythmy: Instead of falling asleep and dreaming, a stronger waking up takes place. There, precisely that which reaches its highest flowering in dreams, the naming of sounds, is suppressed and the awakening movement, through which the human being, without asserting his subjectivity, without his egoism, places himself in life and participates in that which holds one together with all of this. In this awakening movement, which in dreams is only an image, it is precisely the eurythmic that is sought. Therefore, one can say that while the dream life and everything dream-like is a lowering of life into the subhuman, the human being is raised up into a more living, more vital element: he is brought together with the whole weaving and driving of the cosmos when he lives into the eurythmic.

This is why the art of eurythmy has yet another side: first of all, it has a significant hygienic-therapeutic side. The eurythmic movements are such that they can be directly read from the harmony of the human being with the universe. They therefore place the human being harmoniously in the universe and are therefore healing movements, provided they are not exaggerated. But they also have the effect of directing and orienting the whole human being. This does not mean that ordinary gymnastics – and this is the pedagogical side of eurythmy – should be suppressed by eurythmy. Rather, it is hoped that eurythmy will prove a fruitful addition to ordinary gymnastics. In ordinary gymnastics, we are concerned only with the physiology of human nature. The main focus is on what can be done physiologically from the physical. In eurythmy, the aim is to bring the human organism, which is used as an artistic instrument, into movement in such a way that the whole human being is in harmony with the physical in mind and soul.

All that I have said now is expressed precisely in the practice of the eurythmic art. For those who want to develop the eurythmic art themselves, everything that is asleep in the human being must always be overcome, everything that is selfish in the human being must be brought out of life. And those who want to do eurythmy must awaken their life force, they must work to overcome selfishness and harmonize themselves with the whole universe. Thus eurythmy is something that can be hoped for. As I said, we think very modestly about what we can achieve today, but we can hope that it will develop into something ever higher and higher, because it regards the human being, the most perfect means of expression in the whole universe, as its instrument.

And so you will see how that which otherwise can only be expressed through audible language – but which can only rise to the artistic level when it becomes musical or plastic – how that which otherwise comes to expression through audible language is expressed here on the stage before you by the whole human being, who has become the larynx, in a mute language. On the one hand, this will be accompanied by music, which is, after all, only another form of artistry. The peculiarity of music is that it suppresses everything that is formative and brings it to expression in the internalization of the sound. The peculiarity of eurythmy is that it suppresses the sound and allows everything to be absorbed in the form.

On the other hand, you will find support in the form of recitation of what is being newly presented in eurythmy. But recitation will also be obliged to fall back on the earlier good art forms of recitation. Today, in an unartistic period, the special value of recitation lies in emphasizing what the prose content of the poem is. Here, where poetry must be recited to accompany eurythmy, it is necessary to develop the art of recitation in a special way, so that the musical and plastic, the rhythmic, the metrical, and the melodious are emphasized above all else. As a result, our art of recitation, as it appears here as a companion to eurythmy, is of course still subject to misunderstandings.

But people will come to see, firstly, the artistic side, secondly the hygienic-therapeutic side, and thirdly the educational side of what is presented here as the eurythmic art. And then we will see that a kind of artistic summit and educational summit can really be achieved through what is only just beginning here today, but which can be developed to ever greater perfection. It is the Goethean attitude to art that really inspires you when you are developing this eurythmy.

Those who place their own human organism at the service of this art will notice how everything that is expressed by the individual human being in spoken language must fall away, and how they must give themselves over to that which, in essence, nature expresses through the particular human organization itself. So that one can say: When an individual speaks or sings phonetically, when an individual moves to mimic and gesture, there is always something of the individual human subjectivity in it, of human egoism. Here in eurythmy, we are really striving for what Goethe considers to be the highest summit of artistic revelation, when he says: When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when man feels himself in the world as a great and dignified totality, when harmonious pleasure gives him free delight, he will regard nature as having reached its goal and admire the summit of its becoming and being. This is not the language of the individual human being, revealed through the movements of eurythmy; it is the language of nature itself, which can emerge when we use the human being as its instrument.

And so, for those with artistic sensitivity, what emerges through eurythmy can truly seem like an unravelling of the mysteries of the world. This cannot be expressed at all in our spoken language. What can be expressed in the moving forms of eurythmy, what the individual human being performs by moving his limbs, by setting them in motion or bringing them into relation to one another, is something that has been clearly discerned from the laws of nature.

If one and the same group or two people were to perform the same thing in eurythmy in two different places, there would be no more arbitrariness in it than there is in the individual arbitrariness of two pianists in two different places playing one and the same sonata differently, reproducing it according to their own interpretation. The eurythmic is based on the law, just as the melodic element of music is based on it. And mere gesturing and mimicry are just as much banished from it as the corresponding musical language or the like is banished from the musical element. Thus one can hope that something thoroughly beneficial can also develop for further artistic education through this eurythmic element. However, I would ask that we be allowed to offer you what we can. Today, we mainly have some nature imaginations, some of which are designed in such a way, namely the 'miracle of the springs', that the poetry itself is already felt in eurythmy. For if the poetry is not based on the literal content but on what lies in the eurythmic itself, then the eurythmy appears as a natural expression of what the poetry gives.

But in all this, I ask you to please take into account what I have said many times: we ourselves are still thinking, with all modesty, about what we can offer today. We are at the beginning; but we also believe that if time is kind to us, what we want to achieve with the eurythmic art – either through ourselves or probably through others – will be developed over time. This eurythmic art will become something that can stand alongside the other, older art forms as a fully-fledged art form in its own right.

Allow me, dear assembled guests, to say a few words to introduce today's attempt at a eurythmy performance, since it cannot be assumed that all the honored guests and listeners here today have also been to some of the earlier events. And I always send these few words ahead, for the reason that this is about the exploration of a new source of art, and not about what is presented. After all, all art should not require explanation, but should work through direct observation, for direct impression. But here, for the first time, and unlike certain neighboring arts with which it can easily be confused but should not be, here for the first time the human being himself is used as an instrument. The human being places himself at the service of the artistic as a means of expression.

On the stage you will see the human being in motion, movements of the individual limbs as such, movements of people, of personalities arranged in groups in relation to one another, and much more. None of these movements are arbitrary, not even to the extent that they might be reproductions of gestures that people also make when accompanying speech with movements, but rather all of the movements what you see here in the movements is really a mute language, it is taken from the movement patterns that are in the whole human organism, just as the movement patterns in the human larynx and its neighboring organs are.

With a certain sensory-supersensory gaze – to use this Goethean expression – we try to recognize the underlying movement patterns of spoken language. We then try to bring these same movement patterns to external manifestation in this silent language of eurythmy. This is entirely in line with Goethe's view and attitude towards art. And compared to what can be achieved, for example, through the poetic arts with the help of ordinary spoken language, something far more artistic will be achieved in this eurythmy because in spoken language there is always a mixture - otherwise it would not be the servile link in our communication that it must be - there is always a mixture of the mental and the ideal element. But the intellectual, the ideal element is the death of the artistic.

Therefore, poetry that uses ordinary speech is only artistic to the extent that two elements resonate in the poetic language, one of which actually lies below the ordinary life of the soul – I would say a layer deeper than the ordinary life of the soul – and another element lies a layer higher. When the poet shapes what he experiences in his soul, two elements are added to ordinary language: firstly, a musical element and, secondly, a formative aesthetic element. Schiller is more of a musical artist, Goethe more of a plastic artist than a poet.

One can say: the less one listens to the literal content in the artistic sense of poetry, the more one tunes into the musicality that carries and accompanies language in the rhythm, the beat, and also the melody and resonates, the more one can tune in to the other side – if it is present – to the plastic, formative aspect of language, the more one comes to the actual artistry of the poetry. For the literal content is not the artistic content of poetry. The artistic content of poetry is the musical or plastic-forming element of language, which must accompany the literal element, so to speak, like an accompanying element.

Just as in music itself the mere movement is extracted, but translated into the [internalization] of the sound, so in eurythmy everything is extracted from language that is connected with the full development of the human will, so that the whole human being becomes, as it were, the larynx, and groups of people reveal themselves as speech organs on stage. And in this way something is achieved that can truly be integrated into our cultural development as a new artistic element. Perhaps it can best be indicated by saying: our language contains something, the origin of which is best pointed out by drawing attention to when human beings learn language. Just consider, my dear audience, that spoken language is learned by the human being as a child, when the human being has not yet fully awakened to the existence of the soul, when the human being is still dreaming their way into life.

And in fact there is something of dreaming into life in the linguistic element. We also think just as little, by developing the meaning of speech sounds and their composition, about how this is connected with reality, as we ultimately think about the connection with reality when dreaming. This dreamy element is indeed one side of the human soul life. It is, so to speak, an element of the soul below. The more a person develops their sense of ego, the more they also dream their way into ordinary life. And in today's world, it is by no means appropriate to work towards this dream-like quality in the arts.

This dream-like element is a dismissed element of the artistic. In eurythmy, we strive towards something that is an artistic element of the future of our culture. If one can say that the more we train the actual sound-thought element in speech, the more we enter into the realm of the dreamlike, the more our consciousness is attuned, then one must say that eurythmy is what encompasses the opposite of everything dreamlike. Eurythmy is precisely that which is achieved by the fact that the human being awakens more than he does in ordinary life. It is a more intense waking than that which is present in ordinary life as a state of consciousness. In a sense, doing eurythmy is the opposite of dreaming. Dreaming is a lulling of the human being, whereas doing eurythmy is a waking up, a being awakened of the whole human nature. In a dream, if the dream is a healthy one, we do not move, we lie still; and the movements that a person makes in a dream are only apparent. By contrast, the pictorial element, the element of imagination, is predominant in a dream.

Here in eurythmy the opposite is the case: everything dream-like is suppressed, whereas the will element comes to the fore, that which remains unconscious in dreams but is brought out here. But this makes it possible for the human being to strip away all selfishness and to perform movements that, so to speak, harmoniously enter into the whole enigmatic world of law.

And one can imagine, my dear audience, that when you look at the moving human being with this silent eurythmic language, you feel an inkling of the unraveling of natural secrets that cannot be revealed in any other way , also taking into account that Goethean artistic attitude that is so beautifully expressed in those Goethean words: When nature begins to reveal its secret to someone, they feel the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter: art. If we now consider the whole human being as an element that speaks the silent language of eurythmy, in order to express through its inherent movements what underlies the laws of the whole world – for the human being is a compendium of the whole world, a microcosm – we achieve the highest artistic level.

Therefore, everything arbitrary, everything merely pantomime or mimic is banned in eurythmy. What comes to light here is a general human quality. In a sense, it is not the individual human being who speaks out of his or her ordinary feelings - as in ordinary sign language or dance art - but rather what is in nature itself. The aim is to achieve what Goethe says so beautifully in his book on Winckelmann - where he expresses the highest of his artistic revelation: When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself to be in a great, dignified and valuable whole, then the universe, having reached its goal, wants to exult and admire the summit of its own being and becoming.

The universe itself can speak through the human being. Therefore, there is nothing arbitrary about the movements of eurythmy. They are evoked by sensuous-supersensuous beholding from the movement dispositions of the whole human organism. When two people or two groups of people in completely different places, for example, perform the same motif in eurythmy, there is no more subjectivity, no more individual arbitrariness in it than when two pianists play the same piece of music in their own way. If you still find pantomime in the things, it is because we are still in the early stages of eurythmy. This will be overcome in time.

So you will see, for example, how motifs are presented eurythmically on the one hand, and how these motifs are accompanied musically; because the musical in its continuous regularity is only another expression of what is achieved plastically and flexibly through eurythmy. But you will also see that this same motif, which is expressed through the silent language of eurythmy, can be accompanied in recitation and declamation as a poetic motif. In doing so, you will notice that it is precisely this art of recitation, in imitation of eurythmy, that must in turn go back to the good old forms of recitation and declamation.

Therefore, the art of recitation is not developed here in the way it is today. This can easily lead to misunderstandings and misjudgment in the present day. In the present day, recitation as practised here is perceived as thoroughly unartistic, because the essence of recitation is seen as being to bring out the literal content, that is, the prose content of the poetry. Recitation and declamation are quite different here, for otherwise one could not accompany the eurythmy with declamation or recitation. The musical element, the beat, the rhythm, the melody, that is, what is already eurythmic in the treatment of speech, in speech formation, becomes the essence of the art of recitation when the musical element is most intensely permeated by speech. Therefore, just as eurythmy itself is still being challenged today, so too will the way of reciting – which must be as it is here, if it is to accompany eurythmy – still be challenged.

This is our intention, and so we are trying to present through eurythmy, to achieve through these eurythmic presentations, that which can only be attained outside of thought: the unraveling of the secrets of the world. For the secrets of the world ultimately reveal themselves only through that which human beings can reveal from within themselves. Goethe so beautifully expressed: What would all the millions of suns, stars and planets be worth, if not for the human soul that ultimately absorbs it all? and takes delight in it, enjoys it? If one can say: that which weaves and works in the world can be represented through human creativity, then many of the secrets of the world are revealed without the detour of thought. And that is precisely what eurythmy is intended to achieve.

Now, you will see that the poems we are presenting today, some of which have already been felt in eurythmy in the poetic disposition, can easily be presented in a eurythmic way, for example, by imagining nature as in the “Quellenwunder”, which is presented here.

I would like to say that our eurythmy has three aspects: firstly, as an art it should present itself to the world. Secondly, however, it also has an essentially hygienic element, a health element. If eurythmy becomes more popular in the widest circles, it will be found that by placing the human being in the whole of the laws of the world in a non-selfish way, as is the case in eurythmy, a healing element is brought into play in the human being. And thirdly, it has a pedagogical side.

Ordinary gymnastics – which should not be done away with, but rather supplemented by eurythmy – is focused one-sidedly on the body, taking into account only the physiology, only the physical form. Eurythmy, on the other hand, takes into account the whole human being and aims to express in movement that which works through body, soul and spirit. Thus, in contrast to mere physiological gymnastics, which works on the body, what is expressed through eurythmy is a spiritualized form of gymnastics, alongside the artistic aspect of eurythmy.

In this way eurythmy can truly become a fruitful element in the development of our time. But don't think that we are being immodest when we speak of what we can already do in eurythmy today. We are our own harshest critics and judges. We know that we still have to ask for leniency for our beginnings. We know that it can perhaps only be called an attempt at a beginning. But we are also firmly convinced that if eurythmy is met with interest from our contemporaries, it has an undreamt-of potential for development and that, if it further developed by us, but probably by others, [that] eurythmy will be able to establish itself as a fully-fledged younger art alongside its fully-fledged older sister arts.

Allow me, dear assembled guests, as always before these performances, to say a few words about the nature of our eurythmy art. It is certainly not my intention to give some kind of explanation of the eurythmic art as such; that would be an unartistic endeavor, because everything artistic must not work through some kind of theoretical view, but through the immediate impression, through that which is directly revealed in art. But our eurythmic art can very easily be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts. It would be a real mistake to equate it with the art of dance, the art of gestures and the like, because what you will see presented here as eurythmy is drawn from very specific new artistic sources. And like everything that is done here, for which this building - the Goetheanum - is intended to be the representative, like everything is imbued with what one can call the Goethean world view, so too is our eurythmic art imbued with a Goethean artistic attitude and a Goethean artistic concept.

Of course, Goethe should not be taken as the Goethegelchrten take him: as the personality who died in 1832 and whose lifetime can be studied externally. Rather, Goethe must be taken as a continuing cultural factor for humanity, which is becoming different with each passing year. When we speak of Goethe, of Goetheanism, we are not speaking of the Goetheanism of 1832, but of the Goetheanism of the 20th century, of the year 1920. And here it is a matter of the fact that Goethe wanted to replace the dead orientation towards the world, which still dominates our present-day view, with a living one. This living view, namely of the workings of living beings themselves up to and including human beings, as found in Goethe, is still far from being sufficiently appreciated, far from being understood in any way. It will have to become a shot in the whole spiritual development of humanity. Those who today believe they already understand Goetheanism in its direction misunderstand precisely the most intimate, the most important.

What is presented here as eurythmy art is taken from Goethean sensual-supersensory vision, from the whole human being. Just as Goethe, in accordance with his living view of the world, sees a more intricately designed leaf in the whole plant, so too is the human being, not only in form but also in all the movements he can make, only a more complicated more complicated form of one of his organs, and in particular a more complicated form of the most outstanding, truly human organ - the larynx and its neighboring organs, when they serve as the tools for speech.

But now the question is, firstly, in order to bring forth eurythmy through sensory-supersensory observation, one must first place oneself in a position - which is a lengthy soul-spiritual task - to recognize which movements, but especially which movement systems, underlie the larynx, lungs, palate, tongue and so on when they produce speech sounds. A certain movement underlies this – we can see this from the fact that the entire air mass in the room in which I am speaking is in motion. We do not pay attention to this movement when we listen to the sound, when we listen to the speech sounds.

But this movement can be recognized separately, and then it can be transferred to the movements of the whole human being. And so you will see how the whole person in front of you here on stage becomes, so to speak, a larynx and how, through this, a mute language actually arises in eurythmy, a mute language that is not arbitrarily interpreted in some way, but that is brought forth from the human organism's organ systems just as lawfully as spoken language. But the fact that what otherwise remains invisible is made visible when speaking - partly through the moving human being, partly through the groups of people in their mutual movements and positions - means that the artistic aspect of revealing oneself through language can be particularly emphasized.

For in our language, even when poetic art expresses itself through it, there is in fact only as much real art as there is musicality in this language on the one hand, and plastic form on the other. The literal content, which is usually what unartistic observers of poetry place the greatest value on, is not actually part of the real art. The works of real art are much rarer than one might think. Before Schiller visualized the literal content of a poem in his mind, there was always a kind of wordless melodious element at the base, a rhythmic, metrical, melodious element, and only then did he string the literal words on to it. Goethe, who was more of a plastic poet, had something formative in his language. And this formative quality can be seen if one can feel real Goethean poetry.

Thus what actually underlies poetry is itself a hidden eurhythmy. It is studied and transferred to the movements of the whole human being. There is nothing arbitrary about these movements. There is something in these movements that proceeds in such a lawful sequence, as the melodious lawfulness or the lawfulness of harmony next to each other in music itself reveal themselves. But this means that in eurythmy, in particular, one can achieve something especially artistic, because in our spoken language, much that is conventional and utilitarian is interwoven. We have our language for human communication. What adheres to it from this side is precisely what is inartistic, so that the more the unconscious of language emerges, the more the artistic comes to the fore.

We must not forget that language is actually born out of the unconscious and the world of dreams in the individual human being as well. The child has not yet awakened to full consciousness of itself while it is learning to speak. Just as the images of the dream enter into human consciousness as a darkness of this consciousness, so the consciousness of the child is still dark when it learns phonetic language. On the one hand, this indicates that spoken language contains something that wells up from the unconscious of the human being. This unconscious must be taken into account in all linguistic matters. I would just ask you to consider one thing above all: grammar, that is to say, the internal logical structure of language, which then becomes artistic when language is treated artistically. This is not more complete or developed in the so-called civilized languages, but rather the more complicated grammar is usually found in uncivilized languages.

Thus, that which runs through language as its inherent law does not come from what stems from civilized consciousness. This law-abiding, subconscious element is what is drawn out of the human being. In this way, however, eurythmy becomes the opposite of dreaming. While dreaming means a lowering of consciousness, above all a lowering of the will, in eurythmy the will, as it arises in speech, is brought out; it is shaped into speech as an element; through a mute speech, a self-revelation of the human being is willed. But in this way we enter into the unconscious creative process of the human being in a conscious way, and we come to use the human being himself in his entire organic formation and range of motion as an artistic tool.

And if we consider that the human being is the most perfect being, we might say, that we know in this world, then something like an embodiment of the artistic expression that is otherwise possible must come out when one uses one's self as an artistic tool. Everything in this eurythmy is so completely derived from the laws of human nature that there is absolutely nothing arbitrary about it, no random gestures or the like. If two people or two groups of people in two completely different places were to perform the same thing in eurythmy, the performance would show no more differences than if the same sonata were performed according to a subjective interpretation. There is always a lawfulness in eurythmy, just as there is in music itself. Therefore, through this silent language of eurythmy, which has been brought forth from the same natural lawfulness as spoken language, a deep artistic experience can be achieved precisely because the mental aspect that otherwise works in language has been eliminated.

And so you will see how, on the one hand, poetry or even musical expressions are presented to you through the silent language of eurythmy. At the same time, in some cases you will see musical elements, which are only another form of expression of what eurythmy is. On the other hand, you will hear poetry recited in spoken language, and you will see that when you present the same poetry on stage in a plastic way through eurythmy , you will see that you are compelled to depart from the present-day inartistic nature of recitation, which is based on the particular emphasis of the content alone. Rather, the important thing here in recitation is to express what is already eurythmic in the poetry itself. What is the plastic form, rhythm, beat, musical element that underlies the actual poetry and what is the moving element in the poetry that lives in the beat, rhythm, what can be sensed in the form behind the words - this must be particularly developed in the recitation, which is especially intended to accompany this eurythmy. We must therefore go back to the form of the art of recitation that was practised when people still had a feeling for the art of recitation itself. Today this is very rarely the case; today one takes more the prose content, only the actually inartistic itself in the poetry and recites accordingly. So, of course, eurythmy itself will still be misunderstood today because it represents something completely new in the sources from which it has emerged, and the accompanying recitation will perhaps also be misunderstood. But that is not the point. Everything that presents itself as something original in the development of human civilization is usually viewed with suspicion. Nevertheless, I would ask you to bear in mind that we ourselves are our harshest critics and to see what we are not yet able to do today. We regard what we can already do today as nothing more than a beginning that is in great need of further development and refinement. You will see that poems which are themselves conceived as impressions, such as the 'Quellenwunder', which therefore already have eurythmy in them, can be translated into eurythmy particularly well, I would even say as a matter of course. But you will also see that where there is real inner mobility and plasticity in a poem, as in so many of Goethe's poems, eurythmy can indeed achieve a great deal.

In the humorous pieces that we will present to you today, you will see how one can follow them without resorting to pantomime and facial expressions, which are only random gestures, but how one follow these things through eurythmic-musical spatial forms, that is, through the musical element translated into space through eurythmy. This underlaying element is particularly emphasized.

I therefore ask you to take our performance with a grain of salt. Today we can only offer you the beginning, but we can still say that eurythmy – because it uses the human being, who is a real microcosm, as its instrument – perhaps allows the word with which Goethe wanted to characterize the truly artistic to be applied to it: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he regards himself as a complete nature, which must produce a summit within itself. To do so, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfection and virtue, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. Or the other beautiful word: “When man's healthy nature works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when harmonious comfort grants him a pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as having attained its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.

In eurythmy, a language should be spoken by the human being not as in spoken language, where the individual human being speaks from their emotions, but rather it should be spoken as if the human being were included in the whole human being and spoke through and from it.

As I said, it is all still in its infancy, but we are also convinced that – precisely because we are our own harshest critics and although we ask for lenient judgment – we are convinced that this eurythmy will continue to be developed, by us or probably by others. And if it finds interest in the broadest circles, it will one day be able to stand alongside other, older, fully-fledged art forms as an art form in its own right.

[Before the break:]

After the break, we will be able to present you, dear attendees, with a scene of gnomes and sylphs. In this scene, we will attempt to reveal the mysterious forces of nature that can reveal themselves in the coexistence of humans and nature. This will be done through that aspect of the forces of nature that cannot be accessed by engaging with nature in purely abstract thought or in so-called natural phenomena. It will perhaps take a long time before it is admitted that there is a working and ruling, a weaving and living in nature that cannot be grasped through abstraction and natural laws, but that can only be grasped when our conception of nature is enlivened by real artistic forms. Nature tells us so much and so intensely that what it tells us must be told in more comprehensive and intense forms than can be done by abstract laws of nature.

Something like this has been attempted to be extracted from those laws of nature: What we experience when we really bring the human being into a pure, I would even say intimate picture with what flows and weaves through nature, something like this has been attempted in this gnome and sylph choir. And here too, Goethe's artistic philosophy is the basis. For Goethe has brought art and knowledge into a very close relationship, and he sees in art that which at the same time imparts a higher knowledge of the mystery of man and the world than mere knowledge of nature can. That is why Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, they feel an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” And even if this is still regarded as something lay or dilettantish compared to so-called strict science, people will come to understand that the knowledge of what reigns as a secret in nature must be recognized in nature as a secret, namely, that one can recognize its secrets precisely by artistically responding to what nature reveals out of itself when one only engages with it.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

Not so much to explain what we are about to attempt on stage before you, but rather to point to the sources of the art of eurythmy, I would like to say a few words to introduce our attempt at a eurythmic performance. For it goes without saying that an artistic endeavor would not be truly artistic if what is presented first requires explanation. Art must speak for itself through direct perception. What is at issue here is that this eurythmic art, I may say, draws from new artistic sources and that it also makes use of the special tools of the human being in a way that has not yet been done in art. Just as everything for which this building, the Goetheanum, represents a kind of representation, ultimately leads back to Goethe's world view, so our eurythmy also leads back to Goethe's view of art, Goethe's artistic and in such a way that the view of the living world that Goethe made his own and which is truly still far from being sufficiently understood and appreciated, is taken as the basis for the training of a special art of movement.

This art of movement or eurythmy cannot be confused – or at least should not be confused – with all kinds of similar things such as dance, sign language, facial expressions and the like. Because everything that is sign language and facial expressions is basically avoided in our eurythmy. This eurythmy is a real silent language as a form of expression.

The poetic arts, they initially use the spoken language. But the spoken language is a confluence of two elements: from the side of the intellect, what flows into the spoken language is what is conceptual and imaginative. But anyone who is able to follow the linguistic, especially when it is poetically or artistically shaped, in terms of feeling, will become aware that language is permeated by a will element from within the whole human being, so that the element of imagination and the element of will come to expression in spoken language even when the poetic art makes use of this spoken language.

Now, however, one can say: artistically, it is not that which is grasped by the imagination, by the idea, by the thoughts of man. Artistic impression arises only from the fact that we immerse ourselves, so to speak, in the creative weaving of the world, to the exclusion of the abstract, the intellectual element, so that we have, in the language that art in particular must use, so to speak, the necessity not to appear entirely artistic. The truly artistic person therefore also feels that there can only be so much that is truly artistic in language if, on the one hand, a musical element flows into it and, on the other, a plastic, formative element flows into it.

One could say that our age is not a very artistic age, that our age also perceives poetry in a prosaic way, in terms of content. Other ages, which, through a certain naivety of the people, are more involved in the artistic conception, did not see the literal content in poetry, but rather the rhythmic, the metrical, the melodious element, which underlies the literal content, as the essential - or also the plastic, the formative element.

In eurythmy, an attempt has been made to study – through what could be called, in the Goethean sense, a sensory-supersensory observation – everything that is present in the human larynx and its neighboring organs in the way of movement patterns when a person utters speech sounds. In the case of spoken language, however, it is the case that the human being directly communicates to the air waves what he can reveal from the movement systems of the larynx and its neighboring organs. But if one studies the real organization of the human being through spiritual science, then one comes to the conclusion that the larynx and what surrounds it for the development of speech is, in principle, a repetition on a small scale of the whole human organism. And if we can work out which movement patterns flow into the movement of the air – which is present when we make use of phonetic language – then we can express not the movement itself, but the movement patterns through the whole human being. And so you will see – without there being anything arbitrary about it – the whole human being or groups of people on the stage before you, so to speak, become the larynx, so that in what the human being expresses through his limbs or in what the groups express through their positions, through their movements in relation to one another, the same thing is struck that otherwise radiates from the larynx into the air vibrations.

For those who have an understanding of such things, I would like to say: just as light, as a small vibration, relates to the larger, more widespread vibrations of vibrating electricity, which underlies wireless telegraphy, so that which takes place in the larynx relates to that which is developed for the whole human mobility in eurythmy. It is not, therefore, a case of trying to express something by random gestures or some kind of mere mimicry, but rather, in the same way that sound follows sound in the human spoken language, movement follows movement in the silent language of eurythmy. But because the element of thought is excluded, because only the will element is set in motion, the perception of what is being presented eurythmically is artistic from the outset. The thought element, the ideal element, is excluded. And by using the human being himself as an instrument for the eurythmic performance, one can see how all the riddles of the world can be seen in this human being, in his possibilities of movement. That is the important thing, that the riddles of the world can be seen in the movements that are performed here in eurythmy.

Therefore, however, it is really the case that either musical elements, which you will hear on one side, can be accompanied, illustrated, I would say, by the eurythmic elements, or that you can receive the poetry recited in the accompaniment of the eurythmic presentation at the same time as the recitation. Through the recitation, the poetry comes to life in the spoken language. But poetry is already based on the plastic or musical element – if the art of recitation is not practised as it is often practised in the present day, where it is not at its height, but in such a way that it achieves artistic results from the outset. Not in the way that recitation is practised, where attention is paid to the literal content, but to the melodious, rhythmic element. This is the basis of eurythmy, and this must be brought to bear in the recitation that accompanies the sequence of sounds. Just as the sequence of tones is accompanied by the musical element, so the silent art of eurythmy must be accompanied by the art of recitation of what is heard on the other side as poetry.

All that eurythmy can offer today is actually only a beginning, and in this regard I ask you to be lenient with the presentation, because we know full well that of what we have in mind as a eurythmic art, today we can only offer a beginning. It will be seen particularly when the things that are poetically shaped are rendered through eurythmy that this eurythmic rendering is particularly suitable for those poems - such as, for example, the 'Quellenwunder' which you will see today – which are not formed from the outset on the basis of the literal content, but on the basis of the rhythm, on the rhythm of the thoughts that follow one another, on the rhythm in relation to the meaning. This lends itself particularly well to eurythmy expression, which is, so to speak, eurythmy felt in that it is written down.

And so you will see how, by using the human being as an instrument for this silent eurythmic language, Goethe's artistic spirit is truly fulfilled. This artistic spirit is particularly beautifully expressed when Goethe says in his book on Winckelmann: “When man's healthy nature works as a whole , when he feels himself to be part of a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when a sense of harmony gives him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult in having reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.” In fact, this is what is attempted in eurythmy: to overcome all subjective arbitrariness, which of course must permeate our speech, so that what is expressed is expressed with an inner necessity, as if the human being were an expression of the whole of nature itself, in which he is interwoven.

That is why, when performing eurythmically, one feels something particularly strongly, as we will try to express after the break in the second part of the program. There we will try to reproduce in eurythmy what we call a choir of gnomes and sylphs. Today it is believed that the truth of nature is revealed only in abstract thoughts and in abstract laws of nature. The time will come when we will know that nature in itself, creating nature, is much richer, much more inwardly meaningful than what abstract thought and abstract natural law can give, and that there is indeed a deep truth in a saying such as Goethe's: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, that person feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” This cannot come merely from abstract thought, from experiment, from natural law. What is needed to understand nature is something that must be felt gradually: one's understanding of nature must develop from mere abstract thought to real comprehension, to artistic comprehension, to artistic insight into the riddles and secrets of nature. Then one finds oneself in that dialogue between man and nature, as I have tried to express it in the choir of gnomes and sylphs.

But as everything that is presented here through this work is actually a matter for the future, I would like to emphasize once again that I ask you to take our presentation with indulgence. For we know full well that today we can only make a beginning, perhaps only an attempt at a beginning of our eurythmic art. But we are also convinced that if what underlies this desire for eurythmic art is further developed, then, especially if contemporaries take an interest in the matter, either either we ourselves or probably others will develop these eurythmy attempts into a complete art, which can then be presented alongside the other art forms as something truly justified and equal.

“Song of the Spirits over the Waters” by J. W. v. Goethe
The Fairy Tale of the Miracle of the Spring by R. Steiner with music by Walther Abendroth
From the Davidsbündlertänzen by Schumann
Saying from Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul (44)
“To Brother-in-Law Cronos“ by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from Rudolf Steiner's Calendar of the Soul (45)
“Poems” from “Parabolisch” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Metamorphosis of Plants” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Fisherman“ by J. W. v. Goethe, followed by a piece from ‘Poissons d'or’ by Claude Debussy
From ‘The Awakening of the Soul’ by Rudolf Steiner
“Professor Palmström” by Christian Morgenstern
“The Skirt“ by Christian Morgenstern
“The Mouse Trap” by Christian Morgenstern
“The Authority” by Christian Morgenstern
“The Oste“ by Christian Morgenstern
“A Modern Fairy Tale” by Christian Morgenstern

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

As I always do before these performances, allow me to say a few words today as well – certainly not to explain the performance, that would be a very unartistic undertaking. Artistic things must work through their own impression and need no explanation. But since this is a new art form, created from special new artistic sources, it may be permissible to say a few words about this new artistic source. What you will see on the stage will consist of all kinds of movements, which will be performed by the limbs of the human body itself, movements of individuals or movements in groups, which will then be in a certain relationship to the relationship of the individual persons in the groups, and so on. What is all this that appears as movement of the human being and of groups of people? Well, it is nothing other than a kind of silent language, a real language, but one that is not arbitrarily constructed, not constructed in such a way that random gestures or pantomime have been taken to form a more complicated kind of sign language. No, that is not the case. Rather, it is a matter of creating something that is completely in the character of the human inner movements, in the sense of Goethe's view of art and Goethe's artistic attitude. So that the eurythmy you are about to see here actually uses the whole human being, indeed groups of people, as a means of expression, just as spoken language is otherwise used as a means of expression by the larynx and its neighboring organs.

If we gain knowledge in a suitable way, through, to use this Goethean expression, sensual-supersensible observation, provided, of course, that we can apply this sensual-supersensible observation, if we thereby gain knowledge of the movements, the movement tendencies that are present when speaking in sound and also when singing in the larynx and its neighboring organization, if one acquires knowledge of these, as I said, mainly movement tendencies through sensory-supersensible observation, then one can transfer these movement forms, which one can study in this way, to the whole human being. So that you will actually see how, in a sense, the whole human being, even the group of people in front of you, becomes a moving larynx. The movements that you see performed here are not arbitrarily invented, but are entirely modeled on the impulses of movement, the driving forces of movement, which can be found in the larynx and its neighboring organs when speaking in tones.

It is the same as the great, powerful Goethean view of the metamorphosis of all living things, applied here to the artistic. Goethe rejects the notion that, for example, the whole plant is nothing more than a complex, developed leaf, so that anyone who understands the whole plant in its form sees in it a complex, developed leaf, and in the leaf only an elementary, simple plant, but a whole plant.

But it is the same with all living things. One can say: precisely in the moving larynx - its movements are, after all, the basis of the movements of the air that occur here as I speak to you - in the moving larynx, one has, in miniature, everything that the will can conjure up from the moving human organism. By transferring these movements, which one obtains by studying the natural movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs, to the whole human being, one really does get something that corresponds much more to the artistic than our ordinary spoken language. Even when it is artistically shaped into poetry or song, two elements are mixed into our ordinary spoken language: one is the element of thought, I would even say that it comes from the head. In our civilized languages, this element of thought is something that is already inclined towards the conventional, something that has gradually lost more and more of its elementary origin in human nature and therefore has little artistic value left in it. For the artistic is based precisely on the exclusion of the rational, the conceptual, the imaginative, on immersing oneself directly in the secrets, in the riddles of the moving existence, without concepts, without ideas. This can be done by using the human being himself, as we are doing here, as an instrument, as a means of expression. This can be done if one has a language that strips away all thought and uses only the element of will for its revelation.

But that is not the only thing we achieve. When do we learn our spoken language? We learn it in early childhood, that is, at a time when we are not yet fully aware of ourselves as human beings, at a time when we are, so to speak, still waking up to life. And in the same way, humanity learned its language at a time when consciousness was not yet as bright as it was in historical times. Learning to speak, insofar as language is interspersed with thoughts, definitely falls back into unconscious stages of human development, and as a result there is something dream-like, something unconscious, about spoken language. After all, the unconscious is popular today. But here in eurythmy we strive for the opposite: we strive for the fully conscious, indeed the superconscious, in human movement.

If you reflect on the dream, you will tell yourself, there are confused thought forms in the dream. But movements, at least when a person does not dream morbidly and rages in his dreams, movements in dreams are also only imagined. One imagines that one is making these or those movements, that one is moving; but one does not really move in dreams, one only has ideas in dreams, not real movements.

The opposite is the case with eurythmy. There, thoughts are suppressed and movements occur. Precisely the will element - in contrast to the thought element - occurs. Therefore, I would say that while everything that wants to delve more deeply into the spoken language leads back to the dream-like element, here in eurythmy there is a complete awakening, an over-awakening. Therefore, there is nothing more to be fought in this eurythmy than any tendency towards the mystical, the hazy, the dreamy. The opposite of the dreamy, the fully conscious movement in artistic forms is what is striven for here. There must be nothing arbitrary about it. So that you do not think, for example, that what you see as the silent language of eurythmy when a poem is recited here are randomly invented forms or gestures. When two groups or two individuals perform the same thing in eurythmy in different places, the individual differences cannot be any different than when the same sonata is performed in different places. Nothing is based on arbitrary pantomime, nothing on arbitrary gestures, but just as music has a lawful sequence in its melodic elements, so here everything is in the sequence of the movements. It is a silent, moving music, this eurythmy.

Therefore, I ask you to pay particular attention to how we work our way out of the beginning. But today we are actually still at the beginning, even if we have come a little further than we were six months ago. At the beginning, there was still something mimic here or there in our performances. Now you will see for yourselves in the grotesques that we present how all mime in our performances is avoided, how the forms are actually found out of similar soul impulses as any text to harmonious or melodious music is even found.

I ask you to take this into account especially when reciting the words accompanying the eurythmy. On the one hand, you will see how one can accompany eurythmy musically. But mainly you will see how what you encounter in the silent language of eurythmy is simultaneously presented by us in recitation. Today, the art of recitation is actually in a state of decadence. We seek to lead the art of recitation back to Goethe's view of art. Goetheanism [and Goethean artistic attitude] is misunderstood in many ways today. Just yesterday I received another letter in which the writer, a lawyer, was annoyed about the expression Goetheanum. He claims that something like that is not German, and that at least this building should not be called Goetheanum because it is not German. It should be called the Goethe Building or the Goethe Temple – the Goethe Temple will be particularly German! This is the suggestion made by the gentleman in question. You come across the strangest things in the present day. But people act very self-confidently in the present day, especially if they have been a choir student or a reserve lieutenant. You see, my dear audience, the art of recitation must indeed become something again, something like it was when Goethe, for example, rehearsed his “Iphigenia” with his actors like a conductor with a baton. That is to say, it is not the literal that is important in recitation; the literal is not the actual artistic element in poetry. What is truly artistic is either the musical or the plastic, the formative. Schiller never had the literal content in his mind first when writing his most important poems; that came later, he had a melodious, indeterminate melodious structure from which he started. And there is actually only as much of the artistic in a poem as is there, apart from the literal content, as inner rhythm, inner beat and musicality. Or one could say: the musical element is more present in Schiller, the shaped, plastic element is more present in Goethe. Whereby one feels tempted to look through the words at very specific forms. When poetry is not oriented towards the literal, the literal content, but towards meter, rhythm, and form, then eurythmizing is particularly easy.

In the fairy tale poem 'Quellenwunder' you will see how a poem that is already conceived in eurythmic terms from its very origin - albeit in an inner soul rhythm that repeatedly returns to the same motif - inwardly forms each individual paragraph, so that the forms of eurythmy can then also be added to the matter as a matter of course. But it can also be done with something like Goethe's poem about the metamorphosis of plants and animals, where everything is based on the observation of plastic natural forms, and everything can be translated into eurythmy as a matter of course.

In the second part, after the break, we will show you an attempt I made to depict something pictorially in a choir of gnomes and sylphs, which is otherwise only found in nature through abstract concepts, through ideas. What we are dealing with is something that still seems paradoxical to humanity today: nature in its becoming and essence, in its weaving and being, is so inwardly rich that our concepts, as we express them in natural laws, are far too poor to express what nature's richness is. Only gradually will it be understood that we must move from concepts to images, to images that also take in the emotional element, where, in wanting to understand the becoming and weaving of nature, we must also take in what takes place in the human soul as humor, as comedy, alongside the serious. The abstract laws of nature, which are of course far from all comedy and humor, which do not even touch our innermost being, they only represent the poorest becoming and weaving of nature. But the upward surge to the artistic, to plasticity, the upward surge to the musical, also leads us deeper into the riddles of nature.

Of course, what you will see here is nothing more than a beginning, because the eurythmic art is still very much in its infancy. But we are convinced that if our contemporaries show a certain interest in this beginning, it will be capable of ever greater perfection. For indeed, the human arbitrariness that works through our speech ceases in eurythmy, and it can be that by using the human being himself, the movements inherent in his entire organism, as an instrument, it can be that thereby fulfill the Goethean artistic spirit in the way that Goethe expressed in the beautiful words with which he sought to characterize the great Winckelmann: “When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified worthy and valuable whole, when harmonious comfort gives him pure, free delight - then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as having reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being.” Such an artistic attitude can best be fulfilled if one does not use the abstract, but the human being itself, who is a microcosm, as a means of expression, as a tool for the artistic. But, as I said, this is only the beginning. If our contemporaries and future generations take an interest, our conviction that our eurythmy can become more and more perfect will be fulfilled. At the moment I must ask you to be lenient with us in this area, because it is really only a beginning, perhaps only an attempt at a beginning. But this beginning will either be developed further by ourselves or probably by others, the latter probably more so, so that eurythmy can establish itself as a fully-fledged art form alongside the other fully-fledged, but older art forms.