The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Those who take the trouble to look around in artistic circles today will find that many creative artists have the feeling that the old artistic means have been exhausted in a certain way and that it is no longer possible to approach the original sources of artistic creation with the old artistic means.

All of you here today will have seen the sometimes extraordinarily dubious but, from a certain point of view, not uninteresting attempts by a younger generation of artists to express something new. Sometimes something comes out that a person who does not want to listen to the deeper vibrations of the times may see as something quite paradoxical, perhaps even crazy. And often it is. But today, especially among younger artists, there is something extraordinarily justified behind all this. There is the striving to get closer to the sources of human artistic creation than was the case in the immediately preceding period.

You are aware of the attempts at so-called Impressionism that were made for a time, which were aimed at something that a wider circle could accept. You also know how in the newer attempts, which manifested themselves in all kinds of strange naming, but above all in the expressionistic attempts, it can be seen how in these newer attempts - which also showed certain successes - it was striven to achieve something with new artistic means of expression.

Now, the eurythmy that we want to show you today is about striving in a healthy way for that which is being striven for in a morbid way with inadequate means and from many sides, even in the present day. What we are trying to do is create a new means of expression for art and a new instrument, a new tool. Our eurythmy is a new means of expression in that it is a real language, albeit a mute one. On the stage you will see a wide variety of movements of the arms and other limbs of the human body. You will see how the individual personalities, arranged in groups in relation to each other, move towards and around each other and so on. These are not random gestures. All this has been brought into such a law-governed order after careful observation of the human organization, as it is present, for example, in the harmonic and melodious elements of music itself as a law-governed order.

If we have to make use of spoken language in poetry, then something is entering into the art of poetry today that, when it enters into any art in abundance, actually disintegrates and paralyzes it: that is the element of thought. Our spoken language is the confluence of that which comes from the human mind, the thought element, and that which comes from the whole being of the human being – we like to say: from the heart as its summary: the will element. But in spoken language, the will element has to submit to the thought element. The thoughts swim, as it were, on the moving will element. This can be observed in a profound sense in human speech.

If we start from what should be the starting point for everything that this Goetheanum building represents, then, proceeding from the Goethean artistic ethos and artistic view of the world, we can draw from the possibilities of movement in the human organism something that is truly a eurythmic, mute language, that is not a random gesture, but something that is necessarily derived from the entire organization of the human organism, as phonetic language is derived from the larynx and its neighboring organs.

But when we apply what I would like to call, in Goethe's sense, sensory-supersensory observation, and of course also higher striving, we encounter a remarkable feature of the human body as a whole and of the human speech mechanism in particular. The human speech organs, the larynx and its neighboring organs, are arranged in such a way that the movement patterns that develop into actual movements directly encounter the external air and, by absorbing the thought element, cause air movements. When I speak here, the air moves in a regular way. But because the larynx and its neighboring organs come into direct contact with the external air, their energies and forces give rise to fine, oscillating movements that are perceived not as movements but as sounds.

Now, with the help of eurythmy, we try to switch off the thought element altogether and, drawing on poetry and music, bring forth only that which is the will element. Where the will does not act on the air through the mediation of the larynx, but where the will directly impacts the muscular system, there is resistance. The air does not encounter such resistance from the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs. This is how the small, delicate vibrations that can be heard come about. But when we allow the other expressions of the human being within us to have a direct effect on us, the organism offers resistance; and then, instead of the rapid, small movements, slow and full movements come about, which, however, express the same same thing – only it is easier to use in an artistic sense – [like] today's spoken language, which in the civilized world has essentially become something conventional, that is, unartistic.

That which is elementary and original in man and which in poetry works as rhythm, as beat, as melodious element, as plastic element, can be brought out of poetry through this mute language of eurythmy. But this makes the eurythmic art something that accommodates the dark, awkward, sometimes paradoxical striving of some artists in the present day. The artistic is based on the fact that on the one hand one can immerse oneself in nature in order to find artistic inspiration, but in such a way that one completely eliminates the abstract element of thought in this observation of nature, which underlies the artistic, that one grasps nature, so to speak, without first thinking about it. The moment you start thinking about nature, you lose art. You have to grasp nature in direct observation. You have to grasp it in images.

In more recent times, when, as I have indicated, one was looking for new means of artistic expression, one tried to achieve this to the highest degree in Impressionism, by tried to capture the immediate impression in a painterly, pictorial way, so to speak, the impression that nature makes, or the impression that the processes at work in it make, [the] colors, effects of air. And so quickly in relation to the act of observation that, in view of the speed of observation, one does not even think of processing the things intellectually first. Impression and its reproduction in painting or other art should be something that, with the exclusion of thought, brings about a revelation in an artistic sense. But when observing nature, it is very easy for the means to fall short of such ideals. For if we try to observe nature to the exclusion of thought, nature has too strong an effect on our lower human faculties. Nature itself makes it necessary, so to speak, if we want to face it humanly, that we do not exclude thought. That is why Impressionist art, which wanted to be based on the observation of nature and the immediate impression, was increasingly forced to powerlessness.

On the other hand, that which is artistic can be brought forth from the depths of the human being, from the experience of the inner human being. But even then, thought must be excluded. That is what contemporary expressionists are trying to do. But by using all kinds of means of expression, such as drawing and colors, they show that they have not yet been able to turn artistic means of expression and artistic technique into a means of expressing what is experienced inwardly. For this inner experience must be such that it has not yet developed into a clear, abstract thought, that it is still an experience devoid of thought. For the intellectual kills the artistic.

We are trying in the most diverse fields – and those of the esteemed listeners who have often seen this building in its individual parts will have seen it in the design, in the sculpture, in the painting – we are trying to achieve what is otherwise perhaps attempted out of a certain powerlessness by those who are striving for the best in the present day. But what is being attempted here with eurythmy will one day be able to develop into something that truly combines the expressionist element of art with the impressionist element of art in a healthy way. For only in this combination will we truly achieve what we are seeking to attain by setting the whole human body, the whole human organism, in motion in this silent language of eurythmy in such a way that it is not the thought that is active in speech sounds but only the human will. All that remains is still free from the thought.

But we call forth what we draw from the human soul life in a completely lawful manner from the organism, we place it in direct view. We place the person or the group of people themselves in such a way that the movements that are carried out do not involve the mental element, but at the same time, the direct impression of an inner human experience that is not permeated by thought does arise. This is what nature cannot give — thoughtless impressions. These are evoked by the fact that we place the inner human experience directly before our eyes in a silent language, visible language. The fact that the moving human being stands before us gives the impression that one seeks in vain in nature. And the fact that the human being

with the differentiated inner experience, at the same time, expression is given to present the inner experience as an external view.

I do not wish to imply, esteemed attendees, that this is the final word for the existing ideals of those who today, often out of such artistic impotence, are striving. But these examples can show you that if only this eurythmic art can develop further and proceed as one can proceed in other arts, some of it can be achieved. Of course, what we have to show today is only a beginning, in terms of the forms we have here at the Goetheanum and what its individual aspects are, and what has been achieved. And I ask you to take the artistic performances in such a way that we can now truly move on to new artistic sources, when we can present our attempts in this silent language of eurythmy here.

I would ask you, first of all, to bear in mind that everything we are trying to achieve with our eurythmy is still in its infancy. Those of you who have been to our performances before will have seen how we are trying to improve from month to month. But there is much potential for development in this eurythmy, and even though we definitely feel that we have come a lot further in the last five to six months, in that we have progressed to a composition of forms that we could not have mastered before, we know – we are our own harshest critics – that eurythmy is in its infancy and is therefore open to many misunderstandings.

Many misunderstandings will certainly arise. On the one hand, you will have accompanied this eurythmy with music, which then means a different form of expression for this silent language. But you will also get to see – or mainly hear – the poetic recitation and declamation that recitation and declamation that cannot be done in the way it is becoming popular today in an unartistic time, which is why our eurythmic art must be accompanied by a new form of recitation and declamation. There is only so much real art in the poetic element if the prosaic, literal element is not taken into account. Today, however, people want to emphasize the literal element in recitation. Instead, they take into account the underlying musical , rhythmic, and metrical, the melodious or the spiritual, that which, through the listening to the poetic word, conjures up the image before our inner eye. And so the recitation must also be carried out in such a way that the main emphasis is not placed on the particularly important word or a logical sentence structure, [that] the outward form with which one speaks today, which is actually is not emphasized, but rather that recitation is seen as a companion to eurythmy, taking into account the actual artistic element in poetry. So it is not the literal meaning that is emphasized here; rather, the main emphasis is on the formal element in the poetic art.

You will see in particular that those poems can be easily translated into the silent language of eurythmy that are conceived eurythmically from the outset, from the very inner feeling from which they originated. You will see this, esteemed attendees, in the attempt I have made to reproduce certain inner natural connections, certain inner world connections in a dramatic scene from one of my mystery plays. You will see that the eurythmic art can be an expression of what has already been thought in such movements.

Likewise, in the scenes that follow the intermission in the second part – the images of the gnome and sylph scene with what belongs to them – I have tried to convey something that is of this nature and is still widely misunderstood today. For in this age of intellectual culture, people do not realize that nature is so rich inwardly that it cannot be exhausted by the abstractions that lead to the laws of nature that can be conceived. It may still sound paradoxical to some today, perhaps more than you care to admit, when you are told: To fully grasp the secrets of nature, something will be needed that moves from abstract thought to a certain artistic form, to a rounding out, to a deepening of mere abstract thought, but where thoughts are then completely excluded. Something new must emerge. We will have to take help from elsewhere if we want to unravel the basis of the workings of nature, irony and humor.

In today's natural science, there is not much irony or humor in the contrasting of natural forces with what is being spoken of. That is why it is, I would say, an abstract web that is revealed to us today as knowledge of nature, as a view of nature. So if you want to understand nature completely – and Goethe wanted that – you will have to progress in the art of interpreting the real and therefore beautiful words: When nature begins to reveal its secrets to you, you feel the deepest longing for its most worthy interpreter, art. For Goethe, art is something that helps to unravel nature.

And in view of all this, I ask you to be very indulgent. We know that we are at the beginning. But we believe that in this art, which uses man as an instrument, as a tool, and which at the same time uses man as a compendium of the entire works of nature, that something will be developed in this art to an ever greater degree of perfection than is already possible today, either by us or probably by others. If there is even the slightest possibility that our contemporaries will show some interest in this art, then there is no doubt that something significant can be achieved through this art in time. And so I ask for your interest, but also for your forbearance. For we are thoroughly convinced that, even if it takes a long time, there is something in this eurythmic art, which, as I said, is now in its infancy, that can be perfected so that this eurythmic art will one day be able to stand alongside the older established arts as a fully recognized art.

“Wanderers Sturmlied” by J. W. v. Goethe
Music from the 4th Symphony by Anton Bruckner
From the 6th scene of “Guardians of the Threshold” by Rudolf Steiner
Music from the 4th symphony by Anton Bruckner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (46th) by Rudolf Steiner
Parabase by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (46th) by Rudolf Steiner
To the Cicada by J. W. v. Goethe
“St. Expeditus“ by Christian Morgenstern
“Cupid and Psyche” by J. W. v. Goethe
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Korfs Verzauberung”; “The Impossible Fact”; “The Shoes”; “The Aesthete”; “The Authority”; “The Mouse Trap”
Cheerful prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals “Seance” by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Joy“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“The Sorcerer's Apprentice” by J. W. v. Goethe

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

In eurythmy, a sample of which we would like to present to you here today, a special art form is cultivated, an art form that, in the way it appears here, relies on a new artistic instrument, a new artistic tool, namely the moving human being himself, with his inner organic possibilities of movement, and that draws from very special sources.

If one were to describe this art form externally, one would say that it is a kind of silent language. But even though you will see people moving – moving both their limbs and performing movements as individuals or as part of a group – if you also see that, you cannot say that the aim here is to achieve a kind of general sign language or a kind of mimic language that is widespread among people. Everything that the mere momentary gesture would give, or that pantomime or mimicry would give, is avoided here. Rather, the attempt is made to give a thoroughly lawful mute language, a mute language that is brought out of the whole human organism according to the same laws as spoken language itself, [as] audible language is brought out of a particular organ system, out of the larynx and its neighboring organs.

The whole of eurythmy has actually emerged from Goethe's view of art and Goethe's artistic ethos, but in such a way that nothing arbitrary is established, but that the essence, the nature of the human organism is carefully studied through what one can call with Goethe's expression: sensual-supernatural vision.

When one comes up with something like eurythmy, one must surely be inspired by those endeavors that are clearly visible in the present and that are directed towards new means of artistic expression. Today, when we look at contemporary artistic endeavors, we see everywhere that artistic natures in particular are striving to go beyond the old means of artistic expression. We see this in painting, even in sculpture. We can also see it, although it is less noticed, in poetry.

What is actually being striven for? What is the background to this striving? Take the example of painting. Those who, because they are so old today, have experienced that painting as a contemporary one, which did not yet know about the so-called “open air” and the like, they saw that the old artistic means of expression means of expression of painting consisted of, something that was traditionally present, simply to be processed with certain means that one could learn in school, in order to express that which had now also become more or less traditional. Now one got the feeling: these means of expression alone have actually already passed through human thought too strongly. If one still felt painting from the first half of the 19th century - at least the common, [which] was common practice -, one could say: something strongly processed by human thought was already present in the treatment of the means of expression. It is only natural that when one works with certain means of expression for a long time, human thought comes into it, and now knows how to do one thing better or less well. And then one notices in the way it works, in which human thought plays a part, that here thought has played a part.

But even if such a method of treatment may still be artistic in its starting-point, it will be felt to be inartistic after a certain time, when human thought has taken over the treatment of the means of expression. For everything that is actually conceptual, everything that has the quality of an idea, kills every artistic element at bottom. In the artistic sphere one must not start from the idea in creating, nor must one be induced or seduced, when enjoying art, to understand a work of art with the help of the idea.

Therefore, in painting, one strove for means of expression that did not actually give any space to thought, either in artistic creation or in artistic enjoyment. And one strove to capture the immediate impression of how some part of nature presents itself under the influence of light, air and so on. One tried to capture the moment so that one tried to give, so to speak, in a pictorial way, that which flits by so quickly that one does not even have time to think. This was tried for a while. But in time one realized that one could not actually achieve a satisfying result in this way, in any field of art. If you only want to capture what nature reveals to the exclusion of thought, then you do not get the full nature, you get something that does not stand like a solved puzzle, but like a question. In short, you get something unsatisfactory. You found that nature cannot actually be mastered artistically if you do not mix in the thought.

Now the opposite direction was taken. It was said: The artistic can also come from the immediate inner human experience, from that which man experiences in such a way that he does not yet think about it, that he does not let it come up into thought. So, in a sense, they worked with what remained more or less pictorial, not grasped by thought, but still an inner experience. They also tried to depict such things in painting, for example. Those who do not like to get involved in such artistic experiments perceive much of what is seriously striven for in the present as mere folly. Because when someone throws a few colors around or tries to capture something he has experienced inwardly, then the artist has perhaps tried to paint on a surface – let's say a liberating inner experience, an inner liberating sensation, a relief in the sensations. He considers that which arises as an image in his mind, without him engaging with the idea, to be this inner liberation, and he captures it with colors on some surface, throws it down, and the other person, who sees a decked-out ship or something like that in his painting, cannot find his way around in terms of what it actually means. One has not experienced any satisfactory results for the reason that one has felt, again, that the means of artistic expression – color and line – do not produce what one actually wants to experience inwardly.

Now one notices what this thing comes down to, especially in relation to poetry. Poetry, after all, has to struggle constantly with thought – especially in our civilized languages – in order to create artistically. If one goes back to the original state of languages, this is not the case: When someone said this or that, one still sensed in the language either the musical or the plastic element. I will give you an example. Suppose you take a very characteristic word of the Austrian dialect, that is, a word that is still close to the more original forms of speaking, which is found in the word “FHimmlitze[r],” the Himmlitzer. Anyone who pronounces this word as the Austrian farmer does will notice the three-pronged lightning flash. For Himmlitze[r] is also something that describes Werterleuchten and the [three] pronged lightning flash. You can still tell from the word that this is the case. But in our civilized languages, speaking, even the speaking of the phonetic, has taken on a thoroughly conventional character. We have organized our languages, especially the civilized languages, in such a way that they lead to understanding, to the most prosaic element of communication between people. But everything that is supposed to lead to this, to bring about understanding between people, naturally leads back to thoughts.

If the poet then has to use a formed language, as is of course the case, then the listener or the reader of the poems perceives the prose content. And that is why today the poetic sensibility - especially of those who enjoy it - is to a great extent highly unartistic. One goes into the content of the poems. But what is actually artistic about a poem is only what underlies it as rhythm, as meter, as inner form, what immediately arises in us as a musical or formative element when we listen to anything poetic. That is why one feels the lack of artistry of our age particularly in the face of contemporary poetry – of which, by the way, it can be said that today, of all that is written, ninety-nine percent is too much – one feels the lack of artistry of our age particularly in the face of contemporary poetry.

All these things lead to seeking something that does not need to give the immediate impression of nature, because that cannot be grasped without thought. Then one comes into the realm of symbolism or the like, which is even more clumsily inartistic. Or, however, it is not possible to capture with the usual artistic means of expression that which is grasped as an inner experience that has not yet become a thought. Expressionism tried to do this, but without as yet arriving at adequate artistic means of expression.

An attempt has been made to take account of this modern artistic striving in a very limited area, where it has, as it were, been derived, in our eurythmy. The movements you are going to see are not ordinary gestures. What a person performs as an ordinary gesture cannot really be done in our eurythmy. If we try to reproduce the gestures with which people usually accompany their speech, our conversation, we would get nowhere. We would only arrive at something very trivial that has no artistic meaning. But here in our eurythmy, we try to extract the will element from the flow of speech - which is derived from the thought element - and leave out the thought element entirely. By studying the movement patterns in the larynx and neighboring organs when speaking, we learn to recognize which movements are present in the larynx and neighboring organs in spoken language. Then we can transfer these movements, visible to the senses and the supersenses, to the whole person.

But then something very special comes to light. The larynx is in direct contact with the air. When we now tense the whole person, what flows out of him as a movement pattern first passes into the muscular organism. And if we do it in the transfer into external bodily movements of the groups, then it also goes into the external spatial movement. What is set in motion in the process is the human muscular system or the whole human being in groups of people. The person who causes these movements first encounters the muscular system. This muscular system initially forms a certain resistance. One must pay attention to this resistance. When the larynx begins to move in order to produce speech, it is directly related to the air through cartilage and the like. In this way, the movement patterns are communicated to the air in such a way that what is not actually pulsating in them, what the movement patterns are, is not expressed in the air, but is transformed by this special involvement of the larynx in the whole air circuit. what the centers of movement are is transformed into small, trembling vibrations that are not perceived, but one perceives the sound that is carried through the air on the waves of these vibrations and that strikes our ear.

On the other hand, if you do not take what happens directly in the larynx, but only what is present, and if you look at it through the whole person, then the rapid vibrations that are caused by the direct immediate movement of the larynx and its neighboring organs, [which] come about with the air, but rather slow movements, those movements that become slow precisely because the resistance of the entire muscular apparatus is there, so that we have intuitions, but in a completely different way. The muscular system is only the tool of the human will, and the whole human being is used for expression as the tool of that which is the will part in phonetic language.

In this way, you see, one gains the possibility of realizing the aspirations that I have characterized, which are not arbitrarily set up by me here, but which are actually taken from modern artistic striving, I would say, to a certain goal, to lead to a certain goal in the first place. By not allowing the movements to reach the larynx, but only as far as the muscular system, it does not reach the thought, but the things remain human soul experiences, but expressed in a form that the person performs themselves.

So you don't have the mental element in artistic revelation, which is the death of all real art. But at the same time you do have the experiences that are in the human being. Nature does not give us anything satisfying if we do not bring it to thought. That is why mere impressionism could not lead to any satisfying results. But when you set the human being in motion, you have an inner experience in what is presented; but at the same time you have the possibility to express this inner experience externally, bypassing the language of thought. So, by pointing to the artistic aspect of eurythmy, by enjoying the artistic aspect of eurythmy, one has an inner human experience, which can be grasped directly in what the moving human being is. One has an impression that is also directly an expression. And in this way, something is initially striven for in a specific, narrowly defined artistic field, which you can see in the most diverse ways in our building forms, and also in painting. For there, the aim is everywhere to gain precisely those artistic means that are actually being tried by the most modern artistic endeavors, but which have otherwise led to very little results.

Now I do not want to claim that what we can give here as eurythmy – where the immediate impression is only not raised to the level of thought, because what is given here as expression has not yet reached the level of thought – I do not want to claim that this eurythmy is in itself something that should take the place of the other arts. But I would like to point out that in this eurythmy something is given that can be studied, just as one can seek in other arts — painting and other arts today, including architecture , to present the means of artistic expression in such a way that, by avoiding the thought element that kills art, they truly represent what is being sought from the unconscious today. Therefore, we must also organize the recitation in such a way that we do not recite as is customary today – the prose content – but that we emphasize rhythm, beat, the melodious element itself in this recitation. One could not, as one tries to do today, find it beautiful in recitation when it accompanies eurythmy.

All that I have indicated to you is, therefore, created in a narrowly defined area and is initially an attempt to arrive at new artistic means of expression by first allowing the human being to reveal himself through his inner experiences as a direct expression of the human inner being. Nature cannot be grasped as completely as one can immediately grasp nature and the human soul at the same time in the external form, because the human soul can be naturally expressed in the artistic movement of eurythmy.

But all this is still in its infancy, and you will see that some of the things that try to make an impression on you here may leave you with a somewhat unsatisfactory feeling. But those of you who have been here half a year ago or who have seen our eurythmic art occasionally and have come back now, you will see, you will notice how we have striven in these last months to move forward, because today we already have the emphasis in the musically felt movements, in the whole forms.

But no one feels what eurythmy actually is if they start from the premise that these forms are supposed to explain something, that these forms are one way or the other because they are supposed to be a mimic or pantomime expression. The large forms that you see are all formed from direct perception, excluding the conceptual element. You cannot say that they are so or so. And anyone who sees something contrived behind them, who cannot base it on purely artistic perception, but [gap in the text], is on the wrong track from the outset.

But I would still ask you to be indulgent in your judgment of our performances. We are our own harshest critics, and we know very well what we are capable of at this early stage. This is a beginning, and we must strive to improve. But you will see on the other hand that when something is already conceived in eurythmy, something that is already formed with the exclusion of the thought element, as it is the one scene that I have tried to do in my mystery drama with the two opposing forces: where on the one hand the forces are presented that are active in the human being and that influence him in such a way that he actually wants more and more and more to rise above his head in mysticism, fantasy, enthusiasm, theosophy; and on the other hand, how it leads him into deceit, the other things that oppose him, that continually push him down below, where the spirit of heaviness would like to move, where the sober, prosaically sober is expressed, and so on. Where this becomes everyday [...] man is always in the realm of balance when something like this, which is in harmony with the life of the soul, is overheard, performed and realized in eurythmy. Of course, in the future our attempts to present dramatic works will also gradually be developed more and more in eurythmy. There is little of this today; but attempts will also be made to develop eurythmy for the actual drama.

For today's performance, I ask that you take it with indulgence. Our attempt is a beginning. But all those who can respond to what is intended can still believe that this eurythmy will one day be recognized as a fully fledged art form alongside the other, older art forms, perhaps through completely different people than we are, who are now starting with it.

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

I do not wish to use these words as a preface to explain what we will attempt to present to you today in a rehearsal as the art of eurythmy; for an art that needs explaining would obviously not be an art at all. Art must work through direct impression and must also be understandable through direct impression. However, this is precisely what will be the case to a high degree with our eurythmic art, as I am convinced. This eurythmic art must not be confused with any of the seemingly related arts. It is not a dance art or something similar; it wants to be a completely new art form. And for this very reason, I would like to send these few words ahead as usual today during our performances.

[Eurythmy is] an art form that initially uses the human being as its means of expression and draws from very special sources. Like everything that is to come through the spiritual movement, of which this structure seeks to be a representative, the eurythmic art also arises from Goethe's view of art and, in particular, from his artistic ethos. You will see, ladies and gentlemen, all kinds of movements of the human organism itself, namely movements of the limbs of the human organism. But you will also see movements that the personalities, which are arranged in groups, perform against and with each other. All these movements, which in their totality should represent a kind of silent language, are acquired in a very special way, and I can perhaps only describe the nature, the laws by which this art is acquired, by pointing out that the basic impulse behind this eurythmic art is rooted in the endeavors of the most ambitious artistic elements of the present.

Anyone who familiarizes themselves a little with what is alive in every artistic endeavor today – which, incidentally, has been evident for decades – will have to say to themselves: Everywhere, one can see the conviction that it is no longer possible to continue in the old artistic ways in any field of art, that it is necessary everywhere to reach for new means of artistic expression, and that it is also necessary to seek the sources that represent the artistic in a new form. It was realized decades ago that painting, for example, could not continue in the old ways, even if they are Raphael's or Michelangelo's art. And why was that realized? Certainly, what emerged from Raphael, Michelangelo or any other epigone's time and was executed with their artistic means was something extraordinarily magnificent and powerful. But when any artistic direction, any artistic trend within human development lasts for a while, then the means of expression are somewhat depleted. Then, especially in artistic natures, the need arises for new means of expression. For the means of expression themselves are, after some time, thoroughly absorbed into the human world of thought, into the world of ideas.

Take painting, for example. The way certain painters painted in the 19th century, the use of colors, the way they handled the brush, and so on, was all embedded in ideas. They had the notion, the feeling that one had to paint in a certain way. All of that had already become conceptualized, intellectualized. Now, the conceptual is actually the death of any real art. One can say: the more thought, which always nuances something abstract, has penetrated the earthly into the artistic, the more unartistic there is in art. The artistic must be sought entirely by circumventing thought, by circumventing all abstract ideas and abstract notions. That is why, for example, in painting, the idea arose of capturing the immediate impression, as it was called, through color and form.

But now art has another requirement. If you want to express something through artistic means, it must be rounded off into a picture. Certainly, much that is extraordinarily meaningful has been achieved in so-called plein-air painting, in Impressionist painting. But on the other hand, it has been shown that when man places himself in such a way in relation to nature, as has been attempted there, nature does not ultimately surrender to the image. Namely, one has tried to capture the momentary impression, as one just said, the momentary vision, what the light flooding over the objects, the or the calm air, to capture that as an immediate impression, I would like to say to capture it so quickly that one does not have time to think about the matter, so that nothing of the thought flows into the artistic reproduction. - The difficulty arose, however, that the means of artistic expression, when one excludes the thought in this way, nevertheless fail. You can't get to grips with color and form so that color and form really come together to form a picture. And so Impressionism actually failed to achieve what it set out to achieve.

On the other hand, people have now tried to convey the immediate human inner experience, what one might call the inner human experience. Because I don't want to fall into false, fantastic mysticism, I don't want to say what a person experiences in a visionary way, but what a person always experiences emotionally, without processing it to the point of abstract clarity of thought. Something that can be called an expression has been tried to be rendered in color and form.

This has led to things that are extremely interesting for those who look at the matter artistically. For those who look at it in an amateurish or dilettantish way, or look at it according to the usual recipe with which unartistic natures often look at the artistic, by saying: What does this depict? What is the meaning of this? — which is the most unartistic way of looking at it —, in such people the feeling arose that with such newer attempts nothing was achieved, except that someone, let's say, wants to express an inner liberating, redeeming feeling through the medium of painting. And what he then brings onto the canvas, well, let's say it's somehow a rigged ship or it's pieces of laundry hung on ropes or something like that. As I said, the one who does not look at these things in the right light just asks: What does it mean? He does not let himself be carried by what is there into the inner experience. And so far, experience has shown that even the means of artistic expression, the treatment of colors in painting, for example, are not enough to immediately round off the inner experience into a picture, to present it as a picture.

You have to have felt all this at some point, this struggle for new artistic means and, above all, this struggle for access to the sources of art, for such access that represents something new in contrast to the old, well-trodden paths. Then you come to perhaps trying what we have tried here in the building, for example: to get out of the forms themselves and also out of the colors - without reproducing, without the idea of a model - what the picture should be. But I do believe that a kind of example, just one example of the use of particular artistic means, can achieve something that can express something that can possibly be expressed, and that this can be achieved through eurythmy, through this silent language that has emerged in the following way.

I may use Goethe's expression: sensual-transcendental vision. Those who are able to apply this sensual-transcendental vision can study the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs - that is, a single organ system of the human organism - when hearing ordinary spoken language or singing. And then, just as Goethe sees only a complex leaf in the whole plant, one can see in the whole human being something that is only a metamorphosis, a metamorphosed larynx organ. Only one must not look at these things abstractly, ideationally, but one must permeate them with artistic feeling.

Then the following possibility emerges: in the tonal language we always have the confluence of thought with human will. Anyone who is familiar with these things knows that from one side, from the whole human being, the whole human being, human will, flows into the sound language, especially when it is artistically shaped by poetry; but that from the larynx, on the waves, I would say, of the will, thoughts flow, swim. In all our civilized languages, thoughts themselves have now taken on a rather conventional character and show in their nature that they are actually only there to enable people to communicate with each other in their prosaic lives by forming words. That is why everything that flows into poetry from the realm of thought must be felt as something unartistic by an artistic nature. And the question arises: how can one detach the pure element of will, which otherwise only permeates poetry in meter, rhythm, melodic form, and plastic pictorial form, how can one actually capture that?

The following comes to our aid: the larynx and its neighboring organs, with their various cartilaginous and so on organs, are directly related, in direct proportion to the external air. As a result, the disposition to move is transformed into the small trembling movements that then pass into the air, which we do not see with ordinary looking, but which underlie what is heard of speech. The movement patterns that become active in the larynx and its neighboring organs can be observed with sensory-supersensory vision. And then, if I may use this paradoxical expression, one can see the whole human being as a transformed, metamorphosed larynx. So that the people who will be performing eurythmy for you here on the stage will actually be performing for you as whole human beings, like larynxes. But if you then let the other human limbs carry out the movement patterns that are otherwise found in the larynx and its neighboring organs, the result is not the same as what comes out of the sound language. Then, you do not have the outer air as resistance, but rather the muscular system to begin with. As a result, the tendencies and dispositions of the movements do not transform into the vibratory movements of sound, but these movements are slowed down. The muscles offer the appropriate resistance, and one arrives at something that looks like a sign language, but which, in the way it is formed, is not a sign language.

If one were to base it on facial expressions or pantomime, then only prosaic elements would actually be possible; nothing truly artistic would be able to be expressed through this eurythmy. But that is not what we are aiming for. All that is mere pantomime is excluded here. Everything is based on an inner law, just as the melodic element in music is based on an inner law of succession in time. It is music in motion, music that expresses itself in movements instead of sounds. So that if one had two different presentations in two different places and the same thing were to be presented eurythmically, there would be no arbitrariness in it, but just as much difference in the individual presentation as one and the same sonata could be played individually differently in two different places.

Therefore, you must also accept what we can really only offer as a beginning with a certain amount of forbearance. Those who have seen our performances more often, perhaps months ago, will be able to see today what we can offer today and will be able to tell themselves how we have striven to make some progress in the last few months. So we are only just beginning with this eurythmic art. And at this beginning you will have to take into account that everywhere, when we try – namely where the form that we are now introducing into eurythmy already exists, where these forms have been tackled – you will see that everywhere the thinking element is excluded and the forms are felt directly. And not in the way they are felt as forms of gestures, but as they are felt as forms of expression for the inner rhythm, for the musical and plastic quality of the poetry itself.

As I said, I do not want to present this eurythmy as an art that can now shed light on all other arts, on painting and the like, but only as an example of where perhaps what is attempted in spiritual artistic endeavors can be achieved most fully. For with this eurythmy one can really shape an inner experience, an inner experience that one shapes according to the poetry - just as music, for example, also appears on the one hand as a companion to eurythmy - but this inner experience is directly transformed into movements of the human organism itself.

So there is an immediate movement of the element, which is first taken from the poem, and this is transformed into inner human movements that round into a picture. Such movements can then be taken as impressions when one cannot manage in natural treatment with the usual means of expression to round into a picture artistically in the immediate impression. When one rounds into the image that which comes to light as an inner experience, at the same time transformed into inner meaning, an expression that is experienced but that works directly through impression, that is what is directly sought through this eurythmy, what has been attempted today and which, of course, as I very much understand, will still be subject to numerous misunderstandings. But that cannot be helped when we present such an attempt as we have made in our eurythmy performance. While we see what we present on the stage as a silent language accompanied by music, we see what is presented accompanied by recitation and declamation.

Especially in relation to eurythmy, the art of recitation and declamation must take on a special position. It must be remembered again and again that what is considered the art of recitation and declamation today does not really stand up to the accompanying recitation of eurythmy. Today, the emphasis is actually placed on the literal content in recitation, but this is inartistic. It is artistic to try to bring to the fore the rhythmic, formative, plastic aspects of language that go beyond the literal content, even in the art of recitation. This is also an attempt to return to the old form of recitation. I would just like to remind you that Schiller, when he allowed his most significant poems to emerge from his soul, did not have the literal content at first. That was not important to him at first; instead, he had the melodious form first, to which he then added the words. Or Goethe, for example, studied his “Iphigenia” with his actors with a baton in his hand. One had a feeling that the underlying rhythmic, melodious element or the plastic-pictorial element was the main thing, as if it were a revelation when the poetic forms were presented.

You will now see that what is already conceived poetically, even if it is still imperfect, will appear here in a very imperfect presentation of what is taken from my 'Mysteriendramen', where the spiritual inner powers of the human being appear. [That this can already be presented quite well: On the one hand, those forces through which the human being wants to go beyond himself, the mystical, the fantastic, the enthusiastic, the theosophical, whereby he ceases to be human, where he would like to be an angel, which on the one hand means an urge beyond the human – when this is contrasted on the other hand with the earlier spiritism /?, the materialism. [You will see:] When contrasted with the already eurythmic thinking, and then, as a matter of course, it can be enclosed in a form that can be quite well represented. I have now succeeded in making the attempt.

One will have to admit that one can only grasp nature through imaginative images. Those who strive for the manifestation, the revelation of the deeper laws, the workings of nature, strive beyond the abstract to the imaginative shaping of the active imaginative forces present in nature and in the world, especially those forces in which human feeling is involved. I have attempted this in the scene in my “mystery dramas” where the soul forces appear – not as personifications, but as real people, but in such a way that the sensual-supersensible element is expressed directly in them. Here, too, nothing is symbolized, but rather, an attempt has been made to penetrate directly into the living.

Eurythmy is particularly suitable for that which underlies the living activity of all nature in the world. For the eurythmic art has the peculiarity that it can bring to view that which painting seeks when it wants to bring inner soul experiences to view, but for which there is still no means of expression today. I am not saying that this element cannot be found, but that it can be expressed well today by making the human being himself, with his movements and the whole structure of his organism, into a living larynx. In the silent language of the art of eurythmy, this is shown by the fact that the human being appears in their ensouled element, so that the sensory is also supersensory: the human being represents the sensory, but at the same time also the supersensory.

But it is not the case that we feel a dichotomy between content and form; because it is by investing it with inspiration that this inspiration is elevated, as is audibly expressed in the movements of the human being, which otherwise would be vocalized in speech. So one can say: Not something unnatural is evoked, but precisely what Goethe calls it: that one seeks out the higher in nature.

On the other hand, we will bring you children's performances after the break. Of course, it is not intended to polemicize [against ordinary gymnastics]; it has its significance for the physical body, but what comes into consideration is that this gymnastics is based solely on the physiological knowledge of the human organism and takes it into account, so that a certain strength is indeed , and a certain physical health is cultivated, but that the will can come out of the human being only if it is educated in such a way that not only the physiological but also the psychological movement is assessed in order to arrive at that which is soulful movement. Therefore, our pedagogy at the Stuttgart Waldorf School had to be supplemented by this soul-filled art for children, in addition to mere physical gymnastics. And we can already see that this soul-filled gymnastics, this soul-filled eurythmy, when applied to children's lives, because it is a soul-filled application of the body, also brings forth the initiative of the will. So that the body is not cultivated through gymnastics, but not the initiative of the will – this is only an illusion if you believe that. Through this soul-filled art, the art of education is truly greatly benefitted, and more and more can be shown.

It is true that we are only at the beginning of our eurythmy today. Those of our honored visitors who have been here often will be able to see for themselves that we have made good progress in recent weeks, particularly in the development of sentence structure, which is expressed here in terms of form - the artistic structure, rhythm, rhyme and so on, in the whole inner formation of the verses. We will make every effort to progress from month to month. But it is still in its early days. And so I ask you to bear with us as we present a sample of the eurythmic art today.

Nevertheless, we are convinced that what is emerging here as a sensory-supersensory art form is capable of a perfection that will come, either through us or, more likely, through others. And then this eurythmic art will present itself to the world as something that is truly artistic on the one hand, and has a very strong educational value on the other. And people will recognize that eurythmy has a certain task and will be able to stand alongside the other recognized sister arts and older arts as a worthy, fully-fledged art. — So I ask you, esteemed attendees, to take these few samples of eurythmic art today with indulgence.

For those friends and today's participants who have not previously seen eurythmy, I would just like to say a few words very briefly, given that our participating children must not be made impatient for too long. I would just like to note that what we call the eurythmic arts are not just some kind of arbitrarily invented gestures, but that they are drawn from the movement systems of the human larynx and its neighboring organs, all of the organs that are otherwise active when speaking. So that what is tendency in the larynx and its neighboring organs is simply transferred to the rest of the human being. In a sense, the whole human being appears as, I would say, a larynx in this silent language of eurythmy, which is then accompanied by recitation or music. The whole human being becomes a larynx in what is presented to you. Likewise, groups of people become a larynx.

This is what makes it a little harder to get into this eurythmy – not because it is something arbitrary, not a compilation of momentary gestures, but because it is the continuation of what underlies spoken language as an unnoticed movement and that this is depicted, translated into a visible language. I would just like to say that, for the friends who have not yet seen it, for today, I would just like to mention that as justification for the art form of eurythmy that we cultivate here.

And I would still like to say that our doctors and lady doctors will hardly see what I referred to this morning as the hygienic side of our eurythmic art, because only a few things could be demonstrated that had been prepared when we arrived. However, Dr. Steiner was able to see some of what had been practised. And it was hardly possible to put together an objective program today, in the few days since we returned from Stuttgart.

So I ask those who want to know a little more about this eurythmy to be patient until later. I will give you a somewhat more detailed introduction to the whole nature of eurythmy when we have a performance of eurythmy in the near future. Today, I ask you to be content with the little that we can offer you after such a short time since we returned from Stuttgart. And so I do not wish to discuss anything further, but simply refer you to what I will say in the future about this eurythmic art.

Ms. Hollenbach has set herself the task of training children in choral singing while skipping the tones. You will be shown a sample of this. She has set herself this task as a children's eurythmy teacher. We will begin with a song “Frohsinn” [cheerfulness], [with music] by Hiller [based on a poem] by Löwenstein. [She taught the children the bouncing of the tones and the movements in eurythmy. It is a thoroughly soulful gymnastic art that will be able to stand alongside ordinary gymnastics. And the eurythmic art will not detract from ordinary gymnastics at all. But precisely because it is possible to teach the world of children soul-filled movements, it will be shown that this eurythmic art will also have a pedagogical-hygienic significance. If gymnastics strengthen the body, they strengthen the whole human being to a lesser extent. In particular, the will can be strengthened by this eurythmy. Added to the usual gymnastics is the child's play in soulful movements, which the eurythmic art can become.]

“Himmelsnähe” by C. F. Meyer with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals
“To the Cicada” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the Soul Calendar (48.) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Soul Calendar (49.) by Rudolf Steiner
“The Journey through the Harz in Winter“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Huttens Kerker” by C. F. Meyer with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals
“Howards Ehrengedächtnis“ by J. W. v. Goethe
“Stratus, Cumulus, Cirrus and Nimbus” by J. W. v. Goethe
Drill exercises with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals (children's group)
Ballen and Spreizen, with music by Max Schuurman (children's group)
“Gleich und Gleich” by J. W. v. Goethe (children's group)
Tactics (children's group)
“Frohsinn“ by Louise van Blommestein with music by F. Hiller (children's group)
“Die Freude” by J. W. v. Goethe
Opening “Question and Answer” with music by Max Schuurman
“The Divine” by J. W. v. Goethe
Saying from the soul calendar (50th) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (51) by Rudolf Steiner
Hymn for the entrance of the Vespers on Palm Sunday by Friedrich Wolters with musical prelude Tiaoait by Leopold van der Pals

Dear attendees,

What is being presented to you today as the eurythmic art is not a collection of arbitrary, invented human gestures and movements, but is in fact the expression of a real silent language, a language that is revealed through movement. These movements, whether they occur as movements of the limbs of the individual or as movements of this individual in space or as movements of groups of people in relation to each other, are always strictly regulated by law, and so strictly regulated by law that they coincide with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way that the word sung or properly spoken coincides with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way that the word sung or properly spoken coincides with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way that the word sung or properly spoken coincides with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way that the word sung or properly spoken coincides with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way that the word sung or properly spoken coincides with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way that the word sung or properly spoken coincides with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way that the word sung or properly spoken coincides with a meaning, for example a poetic meaning or a musical content, in such a way

The basis for such a silent language can only be gained by what one could call a continuation of what Goethe calls sensual-supernatural vision. You know that when we produce spoken language, our larynx and neighboring organs move in a certain way. We turn our attention to what we hear and look away from the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs. But these movements are also transmitted to the air. They are clearly present in a room where people are speaking. Through sensory-supersensory observation, one can, firstly, become aware of these movements, but secondly, one can also perceive the potential for movement. And this potential for movement, according to the principle of metamorphosis – thought of in the Goethean sense – can now be applied; just as they are applied in phonetic language to the special organ of the larynx, they can be applied to the whole human being. Just as movements are effective in the speech-producing larynx and its neighboring organs, so in eurythmy, according to the same principle of language, we bring the whole human being into motion.

So, what you will see on the stage here, whether it be the movement of the individual human being within himself or in space, or movements that are performed alternately by the members of the individual groups: they are always such movements that they represent, as it were, the movements of a human being or a group of people as a larynx that has just become a human being or a group. You have a process that is completely analogous to the speech process, except that you observe this process with your eyes instead of your ears.

Usually, when I took the liberty of speaking these introductory words for the performances, I always emphasized the artistic side of our eurythmy. I will emphasize this artistic side again on another occasion. Today, when we have a number of doctors among us, I would like to emphasize the hygienic side of our eurythmy.

Of course, the artistic element is the main thing about it. Eurythmy represents a new art form and, as such, it will indeed be able to bear fruit in many ways that are being sought today by serious artists, but which are extraordinarily difficult to find. These are sought under the most diverse masks, expressionism and so on, which is always a kind of stammering because one initially works with inadequate materials or with inadequate means of expression. So the artistic element wants to have a fertilizing effect on the various longings that can be clearly perceived in artistic development today and allow a search to be perceived.

But there is also an important pedagogical and hygienic side to this eurythmy. From a pedagogical-hygienic point of view, one could say that this eurythmy is an animated game of movement for the human being, in contrast to the more physiological game of movement for the human being that exists in the most diverse types of gymnastics. Of course, it is still difficult today to argue that such moving, soul-filled movement games, as found in eurythmy, are preferable for the development of the whole person to mere physiological gymnastics.

But we must speak the truth, and we must not shrink back, nor allow ourselves to be held back, from actually putting into practice that which concerns people more. Even if it means creating many prejudices in order to get used to what has become so ingrained over long periods of time in our pedagogical art and also in our education and development of the people, just like ordinary physiological gymnastics. This physiological gymnastics is based essentially on the fact that it starts from the human body and that it brings the human body into such movements, postures and manipulations that correspond to physiology and its demands.

Now I certainly do not want what is only one-sidedly thought [gap in the text] - from this point of view, eurythmy should not replace gymnastics, but only stand alongside gymnastics, so to speak, also in schools, with what is aimed for through gymnastics. The aim should be to dedicate about half of the time that is currently devoted to gymnastics to what we give in eurythmy - so half of the time would have to be devoted to eurythmy. For eurythmy strives to ensure that every movement that a person, that a child, performs is inspired, that no movement is performed without the soul experience being incorporated into it. Just as spoken language cannot be spoken without the soul element being present everywhere in the sounds, producing the sounds themselves or configuring the connection between the sounds, and so on – the same must apply to this moving, silent language of eurythmy. Every single movement, every context of movement, in other words everything that constitutes a single movement, the articulation of movement, what the sentence is in movement, must be imbued with soul. Soul-filled experience underlies it.

If, for the human being, a detachment of his bodily movements from the soul experience is now sought, then, in purely physical, physiological terms, a strengthening of the human body is certainly brought about in many ways. However, this strengthening of the human body is not always a strengthening of the whole person. Strengthening the whole person means that the human being is able to create more and more expression of his own will in his movements, to be present in everything that lies in his movements.

And one can say, if one is unbiased enough and does not close one's mind to important facts that signify a social psychology, one can say: Certainly, in the modern era there has been a lot of gymnastics and a lot of similar activities have been practiced, but whether one can directly affirm that through this – even if perhaps individual has become physically stronger and perhaps also in a physiological sense, and perhaps some things have become healthier, but whether one can also affirm that as a result, the human being as a whole, as a physical, spiritual and mental being, has become stronger, is more equipped with initiative, is more involved in world affairs than in the first gymnastics-less times, that cannot be immediately asserted. This question will not be answered in the affirmative. For after all, our time shows that we live in the epoch of sleeping souls, that we have been driven by gymnastics, and also by many other things that go beyond gymnastics – what has not been produced by sport! But the fact that the result of all this would be a strengthening of the whole human being, namely a strengthening of the initiative of human beings, cannot be affirmed. For it is all too clear that people have become more and more closed in on themselves, more and more inwardly lethargic, and that this inward-closed-ness and this inward-lethargy, this sleepiness of soul, is connected with the misfortunes that have manifested themselves so horribly in the last five to six years. We will only emerge from this, to which we must point, when we strive to strengthen the human being not only through physiological gymnastics, but also through psychological eurythmy, through soulful movement.

Therefore, in addition to the artistic element, which I will come back to in a few introductory words tomorrow, we will include in today's presentation, in particular, children's eurythmy, through which you can see for yourselves how, through the presence of soul-filled movement, something is achieved in the child that can then be integrated into human development with full benefit for the whole human being.

Something that is healing for the human being comes to light through this eurythmy. I need only remind you that we find that, as at the starting point of all human work, there is rhythm. It is not disorderly, chaotic work that has this rhythm, but rather: primitive work is carried out in rhythm. Of course, in our hurried modern times, in the age of industrialism, this has been completely lost. This rhythm is now being reintroduced through human movement games.

Therefore, you will see that everything that comes out is already inherent in the human being, but is internally connected with the soul's predispositions, with inner rhythm, inner tact, and so on. If I may say so, In relation to the artistic conception, this is very clearly evident in the lack of an aesthetic conception of the present. For example, the present has developed a kind of art of recitation that places great emphasis on the prose content of what is being recited. This art of recitation, which is particularly popular at the present time, could not be used in eurythmy. Eurythmy must be accompanied by recitation, which in turn goes back to everything that is actually artistic, also in relation to poetry: to the rhythmic, to the musical or plastic in the poetic art. Today, however, in recitation too, the greatest importance is attached to making the truly poetic recede completely and to reciting according to the prose content, so that the form, which is what really matters in art, is not at all emphasized in today's recitation. So what eurythmy demands must also have an effect on the art of recitation.

All that we are striving for is, of course, only just beginning, as we are able to present to you today as a rehearsal; but those who, from time to time, observe what we are able to offer here as the eurythmic arts will see that we have actually made some progress compared to what we were able to achieve six months ago. Those observers who compare the two – what we presented six months ago and what we present today – may perhaps still find some progress. And we do believe that, although we are still at the beginning with this eurythmic art, it is a beginning of something that can stand alongside other, older art and educational impulses as an art and as an impulse for educating humanity. But I ask for your forbearance in treating our demonstrations, our rehearsals, with forbearance, because they are, after all, intended to be an experiment to begin with. When this eurythmic art is further developed – either by ourselves or, more likely, by others – it will indeed very likely be able to stand fully equal with other, older sister arts as a method of education and art.

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words about the presentation we would like to give you. We are attempting to search for a new art form, and a new art form it is, for the simple reason that we are striving to shape this art form out of a very specific source. It is given by people and shown to people on the stage. These movements are performed either by the limbs of the human body moving or by the whole person moving in space or by groups moving and bringing each other into position. All that is sought in this way is not just a collection of random gestures or gestures that are momentarily sought for some kind of emotional feelings or inner experiences of the soul, but everything that occurs in movements is, in the truest sense of the word, a mute language, but a language that is as arbitrary as the language of sound in the spoken or sung word.

First of all, it is important to note how this mute language comes about. I may use the expression that Goethe often used. What comes about is that what occurs in movements comes about through sensory-supersensory observation, through observation that enables the human being to recognize the supersensible in the sensory in terms of its meaning, in terms of its essence. When developing this eurythmic silent language, one must have a sensory-supersensory power of observation for what actually happens when the speech sound comes forth in speaking or singing. We know, of course, how movement comes about, how all the vocal organs are involved in a particular movement and how this movement is then transmitted to the external air. However, when we listen to someone speaking or singing, we pay attention to what we perceive through the sense of hearing, and what is present in terms of movement escapes our perception. If you study it, you would not get anywhere if you only took what is present in terms of movement phenomena, of real movement phenomena, during speaking or singing, but you have to take the movement tendencies. Because the fact that in the larynx and in the other speech organs that come into play when speaking, the vibrating of the sound is directly connected with the external air, means that movements are produced in the quickest way. But all these movements, which quickly represent a vibration, are based on movement tendencies. And these main directions of movement – when making a sound or otherwise when speaking – can now be transferred to the whole human being according to Goethe's principle of metamorphosis.

For Goethe, the whole plant is nothing more than a more intricately designed leaf. There is something in this principle at Goethe that will still have a great significance for the future view of the world, which is still not sufficiently appreciated even by those who deal with Goethe intimately. But what Goethe saw for the forms, that is, let us say, for the whole plant in relation to the whole plant organ, that can now be extended to the activity of the living being, especially of the most perfect living being, the human being.

What is present in the larynx and its neighboring organs in terms of movement impulses can be transferred to people or groups of people, so that when you see movements of individual people or groups of people here, you are really seeing a true reflection of the movement tendencies present in the human vocal organs when speaking or singing. So there is nothing arbitrary about this eurhythmy; on the contrary, everything in it is as little arbitrary as what comes about in harmony and melody in accordance with musical laws.

Just as two pianists playing the same piece only within very specific limits of their individual conception and the piece comes into its own, so too, through the various performances at different places with special persons or groups, only in individual conceptions, within very specific limits of conception, that which is essential comes to the performance, and that is the same. For there is a rhythmic, tactful, full connection also in the succession of movements, which comes about through the fact that the whole is developed regularly according to the principle indicated.

Now, of course, this eurythmic art is only at the beginning of its development, and that is why it is still difficult to find one's way into it today. But this beginning can already be described as a solution to much of what is currently being sought in art in a certain field of artistic work. We see how people who want to be artistically active today are looking for new ways, for example, the expressionist, the impressionist way, how they produce many caricatures in this way. One does not have to look at what can already be produced by us today, but one must look at what is wanted.

We can see, however, that when we are presented with these new artistic endeavors in the fields of painting or sculpture, for example, the artists are still struggling with the fact that the means still seem unusable today, or that the forms of expression cannot be created immediately. It is important to realize that in every such period, when a new direction is being sought in the field of art in particular, there is a tendency to fall back on what must underlie all art, all real art, but what is somewhat lost to artistic creation when the epigone-like, the imitation in art compared to the epochs of genius, comes to the fore too strongly. All real art-making is based on our relationship to the world – whether we are aesthetic connoisseurs or artistic creators – all art-making is based on our perception, on our entire imagination. The conceptual, the ideational actually snatches art away; the ideational actually has a killing, paralyzing effect on everything artistic. If we want to look at nature artistically or recreate nature, for example, we have to turn our attention to nature in such a way that we do not yet progress from contemplation to comprehension in our thinking, but that we remain with our whole devotion to nature in contemplation, but look at the sensual forms so purely, as if they themselves were already thoughts.

For a time, Impressionism tried to do this. In the field of painting, it was not at all able to achieve appropriate forms of artistic expression. As expressionism, it then tried to grasp the other side of avoiding the ideal by simply trying to bring soul experiences that come into their own in a kind of powerfully visionary form in man, but which do not come up to the clear thought that guides everything artistic, by trying to bring such visionary artistic experiences into forms and colors. Those who are easily inclined to philistinism cannot appreciate this beginning. They see only something in what is being attempted, to hold on to inner experiences through colors and forms, and then they say: We cannot distinguish whether it is a matter of hung-out laundry or a ship's sail or something of that sort. The philistine mind refuses to admit that this is not the point. The point is not that you simply hang something on the wall that reflects an inner experience; but as I said, artistic means of expression were not yet available. Therefore, even when one approaches these things with all good will, one is often compelled to say, especially in the face of these attempts at painting today: Yes, it is based on something visionary, it is an illusion, it is an expression, but it is not yet a healthy expression, it is not yet that which the healthy soul can truly experience.

In eurythmy, at least a path has been opened up, albeit in a very imperfect way even today. It involves a different means of expression, in order to become both impressionistic and expressionistic in a different way. We are dealing here with the human being, with the moving human being, and so with something that can be observed by the observer with the senses, something that can be presented in the medium of the senses. But what is being presented, these movements, are not something that merely needs to be looked at, but rather can be observed in a certain way, just as one can listen to speech or sound, to song, and discern something of the soul in it. What the expressionist wants, for example, that the soul he has painted into his forms and form structures is inside them – can easily be achieved when presented in eurythmy. Because this eurythmic art that I have presented is, like human language, the expression of the soul, of the spiritual, everywhere.

And what the Impressionists sought to achieve by capturing the external image directly, before they had arrived at the thought, can also be expressed in eurythmy, because it is not something that is merely formed artificially. Not even the gesture is formed artificially, but the human organism is studied in terms of how it emits something through the natural movement of its arms, through the natural movement of its whole environment, which corresponds to the movement tendencies that are as natural as in the larynx when we speak.

Of course, something like this must be sensed in the right way, as it is given in the eurythmic art form. We must go back to the truly artistic feeling, also, for example, in poetry, which eurythmy should be accompanied by. You will see how it is accompanied today, how poetry on the one hand and music on the other accompany artistic eurythmy performances.

We must also go back to the example of poetry in recitation to what is actually artistic in poetry. In our unartistic times, we have often strayed from an understanding of the artistic in poetry. This artistic quality is found in rhythm, in plasticity, in form. Today, however, we first consider the prosaic aspect and then attach great importance to the fact that the reciter brings out with great feeling precisely those aspects that are not rhythmic or artistic but are in keeping with the meaning. As a result, our present-day art of recitation is a prosaic and not a truly artistic one. What is understood by the art of recitation in the outer life today would not be at all suitable for recitation to eurythmy, to the silent language of eurythmy. Recitation must go back to the old forms of recitation.

We must see a beginning in all these fields, but a beginning that must lead to a certain perfection. We need only remember that the human being must be the most perfect work of art. Goethe says so beautifully: When the human being is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn produces a summit within himself, taking measure, harmony and meaning together and finally rising to the work of art.

Those who place their own human organism at the service of this art of silent speech, of eurythmy, are well aware that everything must be dropped that is expressed only by the individual human being in spoken language, and that 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, when an individual engages in mimicry or gestures, there is always something of the individual human subjectivity in it, of human egoism. Here in eurythmy, we are striving for what Goethe regards as the highest summit of artistic revelation, saying: When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when man in the world feels himself in the world as a great and dignified totality, when harmonious comfort gives him free delight, he will consider nature as having reached its goal and admire the summit of its becoming and being. This is the language of nature itself, not that of the individual human being. It is the language that reveals itself through the movements of eurythmy, the language of nature itself, which can emerge when the whole human being is used as its instrument.

And so, if you have a true artistic sensibility, what can come to light through the art of eurythmy can truly seem like an unraveling of the mysteries of the world. What can be expressed in the moving forms of eurythmy cannot be expressed in ordinary spoken language. What is expressed in the movements of the individual human being on stage, or in the movements of groups of people, or even in their relationship to one another on stage, is thoroughly inspired by the laws of nature.

We can hope that this eurythmic element will continue to develop in a thoroughly beneficial way for the further artistic education of man.

In all this, however, I would ask you to bear in mind what I have said many times before: we ourselves are still thinking, with all modesty, about what we can offer today. We are at the beginning of this eurythmic art. But we also believe that, if time brings us its interest, what we want with this eurythmy will either be developed by ourselves, but probably by others in the course of time, into something that can be presented as a fully fledged, younger art form alongside its older, fully fledged sister arts.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

As always before these eurythmy performances, allow me to say a few words today as well. What we will present to you today in a rehearsal of eurythmy is an attempt at a new art form.

On the stage, you will see all kinds of movements that people perform on themselves through their limbs, or that are performed by people in space, by individual people in space, or also alternating movements, alternating positions of groups of people. These movements, which will be demonstrated, are intended to be the expression of poetry or even of music. Now, one could initially interpret these movements simply as gestures. But they are not. For everything in which you are to find the art of eurythmy is not arbitrary gestures associated with something poetic, but rather they are thoroughly lawful expressions of what is experienced by the soul — like language itself.

An attempt has been made to give a real mute language in this eurythmy, a language that consists of human movements. The way in which this is attempted is entirely in line with the spirit of Goethe's world view. However, one must not misunderstand the manifold aspects of this Goethean world view and also understand how to develop it further. Eurythmy is truly that which Goethe calls the expression of the sensual and the supersensible. For it is based on the study of the impulses and tendencies of movement that are set in motion in the human larynx and all those organs that connect to the larynx when speaking, for the language that is contained within.

Phonetic language is used as a means of poetic expression. However, it can be said that the more advanced a culture is, the more phonetic language approaches the prosaic as a means of expression. If we go back to the poetry of earlier times, we can see that in earlier times, poetry was still seen in what actually lies behind the actual prosaic nature of language, in the rhythms, in the rhythmic movement of language, and also in the plastic imagery that is expressed through language. This song-like and plastic character of language is increasingly being stripped away, the more language takes on the character given to it by the advance of spiritually inanimate movement. In particular, because speech is there for human understanding, for conversation, an unartistic element flows more and more into speech.

In this inartistic spoken language, however, one can seek out what lies at its artistic core. In it - in this phonetic language - two human revelations flow together, from two very different sides: on the one hand, the revelation of thoughts, everything that is thought and imagined, so to speak, everything that flows from the human head into the larynx, that is the one element of phonetic language. The other element is everything that comes from the whole human being: it is the will element in speech. One can say: the laws of the will, the inner soul life revealed in the will, flow together when one forms speech artistically, most especially.

But just as in every art there is less that is truly artistic the more that is ideational and mental that flows into it, so too in what is presented poetically there is less that is truly artistic as the thought - which is a prosaic element - flows into this artistic element. The actual poetry is given in the will element, which lives itself out in rhythm and beat, in the whole formation, and which also lives itself out in the images on which it is based.

Now, in eurythmy, it is precisely the task of stripping away that which is the thought element. This is then emphasized in the recitation that accompanies the eurythmy, but which must also be shaped in a special way for the eurythmy, as I will mention in a moment. In contrast, in the movements of the eurythmy itself, one will strip away everything that is conceptual. The whole human being is made the subject of expression: everything that is done in the way of movements as silent speech is now the expression not of thoughts but of the will element, which is expressed through the whole human being - namely through everything that is connected, that integrates into the rhythmic system, into the heart system and so on.

But in order to be able to do this, to really bring the element of will to manifestation through movements like a mute language, it is necessary to study the movement tendencies of the larynx and the other speech organs. When we speak, it is clear that our larynx and speech organs are in motion. One need only think of the fact that while I am speaking here, the air comes into certain lawful movements, which movement is simply a continuation of the movements initiated by the larynx and its neighboring organs. But it is not so much these movements that are of interest for eurythmy. Rather, it is the movements, seen supersensibly, that are the potential movements. And according to Goethe's law of metamorphosis, according to which the whole organism is only a more complicated form of a single organ, one can bring the whole person into such movement, as the larynx actually wants to develop in speech.

This is the study that must underlie this mute language, which comes to the fore in eurythmy. You see, as it were, the whole human being become the moving larynx. The movements are only different from those that function in phonetic language because in phonetic language the cartilages of the larynx collide directly with the outside air, while in euryth we let that which pours out of the will element strike together with the muscles, which offer a much stronger resistance to what is brought to the fore by the will. That is why these movements occur in a slowed-down form in eurythmy, which come to the fore in swinging oscillatory movements when speaking aloud, as it were, summing up the swinging movement into one main form. And that is expressed through the whole of the human personality, through the whole of the muscular organization. That is the mute language of eurythmy.

Therefore, in the succession of movements, it is something that represents a law as necessarily as the musical element itself represents a law in the succession of the melodious element or in the juxtaposition of what represents a law as does the harmonic element in music. And just as little as more than a certain degree of subjective interpretation comes into it when two pianists play the same sonata independently of each other, so it is also in eurythmy when the same thing, the same poem is presented by two personalities or by two groups. Thus, the individual element is no more distinct than the individual interpretation of two piano players of the same Beethoven sonata. There is nothing arbitrary in this artistic eurythmy, but everything is just as internally lawful as in music itself.

This makes eurythmy, this silent language, particularly suitable for serving Goethe's demand to bring a sensual and supersensory element into artistic representation, because it dissociates the prosaic, the thought element, from the poetry and translates into visible movement what is actually artistic in it. One could also say: sculpture in motion, gestures that take hold of the whole human being, understood as language, as real language, as unambiguous language. This is what should come to the fore in eurythmy.

Therefore, you will see that this silent language can be accompanied on the one hand by the musical element and on the other by the poetic element in the recitation, which, however, as such, as the art of recitation, must in turn return to the earlier good forms of reciting, where one recited according to measure and rhythm, not according to the prose content of the poem, after which one has just now especially formed the art of recitation and sees something perfect in this prosaic form of the art of recitation.

How great poets did not consider this prosaic element, to which so much importance is attached in today's unartistic age, to be the main thing, can be seen from the fact that Schiller, for example, never had the literal content of a poem in mind, at least not in his great poems. He always had something vague and melodious in his soul, and only then did he add the literal content. Goethe even rehearsed his Iphigenia with his actors like a conductor rehearsing a piece of music with a baton, not emphasizing the content of the prose during the recitation, but rather the artistic, rhythmic, and metrical form, the plastic, musical element in the poetic, which is, after all, what is truly artistic in the poetic.

Then we shall see how that which is already eurythmically shaped in the imagination, such as my [mystery drama] scenes, which are also being presented today, express the expressions of the laws of the human soul, and the paths that this soul life can take, as well as that which is already inwardly formed in the feeling, and how that can be expressed quite naturally in eurythmy. In scenes like these, we can see how we must develop towards an understanding of the life of nature and the world, so that we no longer base our understanding of the life of nature and the world merely on intellectual abstractions, but on imaginations — imaginations such as I have attempted in my mystery scenes, of which a rehearsal will also be given today. For the fact that human development must go in this direction is in line with a deep conviction that one gains when one has any insight at all into the workings of human and non-human nature. What use is it, dear attendees, to philosophize about the fact that real knowledge, real understanding, only exists in the rational, clearly analyzable, when nature does not give up its essence to the analyzable, the discursive, the rational alone. If nature works in images that only reveal the inner essence of nature as images, then it is necessary that we also penetrate into the inner essence of the existence of the world through images, through imagination.

The fact that people wanted to understand nature only with their minds actually led them to say, cowardly:

No created spirit penetrates into the depths of nature
Happy he to whom she shows only the outer shell.

Goethe, in his old age, when he was truly able to think more clearly about such things than many who philosophize rationally, said of these words of Haller's – “No created spirit penetrates into the innermost being of nature; blessed is he to whom it shows only the outer shell” – Goethe said:

“Into the innermost part of nature”
Oh, you philistines!
“No created spirit can penetrate."

May you not remind me and my brothers and sisters
of such a word:
We think: place by place
we are within.“
“Happy the man to whom she shows
Only the outer shell!”
That's what I've heard repeated for sixty years,
I curse it, but furtively;
Tell me a thousand, a thousand times:
She gives everything abundantly and gladly;
Nature has neither core
Nor shell,
She is everything at once;
She only tests you, most of all,
Whether you are core or shell.

So it is: the one who does not want to be shell with his soul, that is, a bundle of intellectual ideas, must move up to images. But then knowledge connects with art. And then one can say, say with understanding, what Goethe also demanded of true art: that it is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that could never come to revelation without it. And one understands Goethe's other feeling about nature and art: “When nature begins to reveal her manifest secret to someone, they long for her most worthy interpreter, art.”

This kind of world view, this Goetheanism, underlies what we want to present in eurythmy here. In the second part, after the break, you will see that our children's eurythmy demonstration – a presentation of eurythmic poems by children – shows the very strong hygienic and educational side of this eurythmy. Ordinary gymnastics, the one-sidedness of which is still not recognized by the public today, will have to be supplemented because it only takes into account the physiological aspects of the human being, the soul of the movements that the human being performs as a child. And only the art of movement imbued with soul, eurythmy, will truly make the human being strong-willed, while mere gymnastics may make the body strong, but not at the same time the soul, and in particular does not draw the initiative of the will from within. Eurythmy can bring the initiative of the will from within the human being.

But all in all, we must ask you to be patient, because what is being attempted as a new art form is still in its infancy. It is an attempt at the beginning of what I have presented to you more or less as the ideal of this art. But those who saw this eurythmy here months ago and will see it again now will see that we have worked on it, that we have achieved a great deal in the formation of the groups and also in the formation of the movements of the individual compared to before. We are the harshest critics of our performances and we know that the eurythmic art is in its infancy. But we also believe that, if it is further perfected either by us or probably by others, it will one day be able to take its place as a younger, fully-fledged art alongside other, older, fully-fledged art forms.

Dear attendees,

Allow me to say a few words before this eurythmic presentation today. In this eurythmic art, of which we want to show you a sample here today, the aim is to create something from certain new art sources and from certain means of expression, which in a sense can be called a new art form. And anyone who takes into account the striving for new art forms among today's artists will perhaps see it as a possible and necessary attempt when special artistic sources are opened up. The point is that through this opening up of special artistic sources in the human being in eurythmy, as it is meant here, a kind of silent language is presented through movements of the human limbs or also through movements of the human being in space, through alternating movements of people who belong to groups.

I would just like to point out how such movements, which are by no means arbitrary gestures in eurhythmy, and are by no means gestures invented in an instant, can come about as equally lawful forms of expression of the human soul experience, just as speech or song, the musical itself, creates means of expression for what can be experienced by human beings.

It can be said that the more artistic elements there are in a person's language, the more these elements express this language as a basis, as revelations of the poetic, the more one goes back in the development of language. It is indeed a peculiar fact that the more advanced the languages within human civilization become, the more they develop into a conventional means of expression for external human intercourse, and that to the same extent as the artistic perception of language loses its power for truly artistic, poetic expression. And we must arrive at the cause of this peculiar phenomenon, which can only be penetrated through the artistic. When searching for this cause, one will find that the further back one goes in the development of language, the more the language, by filling it, takes up the whole person, and the sound language takes up the whole person in such a way that one can say: in different ways, the sound language takes up the whole person.

The less prosaic spoken language has become as a mere language of communication, as a mere language of everyday life, the more, the further one goes back to even more primitive language elements, the more it engages the whole person, and the more it unites in the phonetic language, in its vocalic, in its self-sound element, a musical, and in its consonantal, in its consonantal element, a plastic, an image-forming capacity of the human being. So that in languages – it was clearly noticeable in the Central European languages, in German, until the 17th and 18th centuries – so that in the original languages there is a confluence of the musical and the pictorial-sculptural.

The musical element, which lies primarily in the vocalization of speech, is now intimately connected with the spiritual element in the human soul. When the human being, as it were, grows together with his spirit and experiences within himself that which can make an impression on him outside in nature, then in the vocal-musical expression, an inner experiencing of the human being with the outer process or the outer thing comes about. One need only recall how certain external experiences evoke the a through wonder, the o through admiration, and so on, in the soul, and one will feel the musical, vocalizing tendency of human speech. On the other hand, we have the consonantal element, that element

where the human being is less introspective and more immersed in and devoted to external processes and external things. This is the plastic, the inwardly pictorial element. In fact, two unconsciously creative artistic elements in the human being flow together in speech.

Eurythmy is the shaping of what is experienced by the human being through the image itself. Again, one can say, my dear audience, how writing originally emerged from the image. We have pictographic writing where writing still has an inner relationship with the things that the human being perceives; then writing becomes more abstract and intellectualized. It becomes a mere sign. And today's writing has little more in what it presents to the immediate view of the experience that one can have when one considers pictographic writing in its relationship to the environment.

Now, in terms of writing, we civilized people are actually at an impasse. We started from the experiential relationship of the human being to the external senses in picture writing and arrived at prosaic, inartistic, abstract writing, and there is something tortured and unnatural about wanting to go back – anyone who has tried it themselves can judge for themselves – about wanting to go back to some kind of artistry in today's form of writing.

But with regard to language, we are not at an impasse. We can grasp the word, the phoneme, the sentence, in short, everything that is expressed through spoken language, in such a way that what is otherwise expressed through phonetic language is silently expressed in the movement of the whole person. I would say that something flows into speech that is like subconscious movement, like subconscious feeling. But the more language is transformed by the era of civilization, by communication, the less one feels the whole person resonating and resonating with the things in language. And if we use what Goethe calls sensuous-supersensible observation to listen to the movements tendencies of the larynx and all the organs involved in the production of speech, we begin to understand what movements are contained in the larynx and its neighboring organs in the production of speech. And if we then transfer this to the human being as a whole, to his limbs, and to his outer spatial movements, then we arrive at the mute language of eurythmy, which is just as necessarily lawful as spoken language.

Therefore, on the one hand, the musical element that has been incorporated to some extent into the vocalizations - into the eurythmy and into the spoken language - can be brought out more fully through the accompaniment of the recitation, and on the other hand, through the accompaniment with the recitation, one can, we say, bring out more fully what is expressed in the silent language of the eurythmy. So you see on the stage the silent language of eurythmy, which, as I said, is not arbitrary, but a lawful expression of vocalization and consonantization, of sentence formation, of grammar. But it is the case that it does not arise through intellectual understanding, but comes forth from the impulsive will element of the human being, so that one asserts the I in the means of expression itself, one has an expression of the whole human being in eurythmy.

This becomes understandable – or at least one is helped in understanding by the musical accompaniment, the recitation. Recitation, however, must be practised somewhat differently today than usual. Today, recitation is actually prosaic; eurythmy, which goes back to what underlies the actual artistic, to rhythm, to the beat, to the emphasis of the actual artistic, beat, rhythm, in contrast to the mere prosaic expression in recitation, would not tolerate this.

In this way, eurythmy attempts to create a kind of language that is not abstract, that is, that does not contain the unartistic, but that can be shaped into artistic effects precisely because it does not yet contain thought, and thus contains only the artistic.

At the same time, this eurythmy has another side, an essential pedagogical-hygienic side for children. Ordinary gymnastics for children can be imbued with soul. Whereas gymnastics is simply derived from the laws of the human body, and is based on physiology, children's eurythmy — a sample of which you will see after the break in the second part of our program — is intended to create soul-inspired movement. This will be recognized one day, when we think about these things more objectively: that through this soul-filled exercise, which is also artistic, the will of the child is strengthened at the moment of life when it needs to be strengthened, if it is not to experience a weakening throughout its whole life.

Therefore, on the one hand, eurythmy is to be understood as an art, but on the other hand, its important educational and pedagogical-didactic side must be taken into account at the same time. This evening we would like to present something from this side, where poetry itself is felt and viewed in a eurythmic way, as in the piece that will be performed for you today, where we try to capture the processes of the world in images that are otherwise only grasped through abstract concepts. Here eurythmy shows itself to be a particularly useful instrument for artistic expression. And only then will we understand how necessary it will gradually become for the human understanding of the world to grasp the whole of nature and also the supersensible in images, not in abstract concepts. One can philosophize at length, saying that yes, the human being must think discursively, the human being must analyze, the human being must explore the laws of nature in logical abstract judgment. Nature eludes this kind of investigation! We cannot get close to nature. We only believe that we can get close to nature with today's knowledge of nature; in truth, the more we satisfy this modern abstract drive for knowledge, which has triumphed in natural science, the more we distance ourselves from nature. Nature can only be understood if we grasp it pictorially, as is generally the case with cosmic processes. But then we see how man is a true expression of such a pictorial grasp of nature and the supersensible.

This really helps us to understand Goetheanism again, which sometimes expresses itself in very short sentences in Goethe, as when Goethe says: “To whom nature reveals her secret, feels the deepest longing for her worthy interpreter, art.” And for Goethe, art was in a sense a means of knowledge, not a physical-prosaic one, but an artistic means of knowledge. In this way, Goetheanism will also take such things into account as we train eurythmy. But the way we can present it to you today is just a first attempt, a beginning.

But one can also be convinced that it is based on the genuine sources of the most artistic instrument, the human being itself, that it will either be further developed by us or by others in the future, and that then, in fact, the older art forms, which, if I may say so, are already running in well-worn tracks, will be joined by a fully-fledged new art in this eurythmy, which may still be met with suspicion today. We ourselves are our own harshest critics; we know that what we are able to give today is only a beginning, but we also know that it can be perfected and that one day it will be truly recognized as a fully-fledged art form that can stand alongside other, older art forms.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to begin today, as I always do before these eurythmy performances, with a few words about the significance of the eurythmic art. We have here an attempt at this eurythmic art, a beginning, one might say, of an attempt at a kind of silent language. You will see this silent language performed on stage in movements that are carried out by the human limbs - also through movements of the whole person in space - or through the alternating movements, through the alternating positions of personalities in groups and the like.

All of this could initially be seen as a mere art of gestures, where an attempt is made to express a poetic content, which is the underlying basis and is also recited during the performance, or to express a musical piece, which can also be the basis of the presentation and which is played or sung at the same time – it could look as if movement is used to add gestures or a certain facial expression to the poetic, literal or musical content that forms the leitmotif. It is not so, but with this eurythmic art, we are in fact trying to open up a new source of art and also to bring very special means of artistic expression. Here, the source is the human being itself. And the source opens up through a special training of what one can call in the sense of Goetheanism: the striving for the sensual-supernatural element in art.

We see, my dear attendees, today the most diverse efforts to get out of the old traditional art forms, to get out of the old artistic language, and to find something new as a means of artistic expression. We see this in the fields of sculpture, painting, and also in the field of poetry; in the field of music it has been noticeable for a long time and so on.

It is always the case, when a certain period of time has been fulfilled, that the forms for the art of this time become too intellectual. What is still intuitive and instinctive at the beginning of an artistic epoch, what arises from the most elementary emotions of the human being, is studied in the course of time, analyzed by the human intellect, and becomes artistic technique, but one that is imbued with intellect. And then it increasingly appears as imitation art, as something that a young generation will then use [reject].

Today, we see attempts to arrive at a new artistic formal language, particularly in Impressionism and Expressionism. However, despite the fact that nothing should be said against some extraordinarily significant beginnings in this direction, it must also be said that the most serious artists and connoisseurs in this field are somewhat dissatisfied. Take the field of painting, for example. It is not possible to merely conjure up certain elementary experiences - I would say half-servants of human nature, which are to be brought onto the canvas - and really express them properly in colors and lines. The special difficulty that exists in every art is that the intellectual element has a deadening, diluting effect on everything artistic to the extent that thoughts, ideas, and the intellectual in general enter into the artistic. The artistic is killed. This is why Goethe believed that the expression 'sensual-supersensory' is particularly appropriate for the artistic. There must be something immediate that can serve as a means of expression in the external world. But the moment any idea is impressed upon this means of expression, artistic enjoyment ceases. And I have the feeling that it is easiest to achieve something sensual and supersensual when one uses the human being himself as a tool for artistic expression.

But for this to happen, human speech must also be studied in a sensual and supersensible way. When a person makes himself audible, not only in poetry but also, for example, in song, through his vocal organs, through his speech organs, then the expression of these speech organs is always based on movements whose tendencies can be examined if one has the opportunity to rise above mere sensory observation through hearing and penetrate into that which is not directly heard but which underlies it as a movement, a movement of the larynx, a movement of the other organs involved in speaking or singing. The soul of human speech is based on the fact that the human being localizes his muscular system on the larynx and can use it to produce movements that then become speech simply through their peculiarity. These movements can be studied sensually and supersensibly. One must study the large course of what is organized by the larynx and the other speech organs into vibrations in the air, or, I should say, into the separation of many small vibrating movements. One must intuitively grasp the underlying tendencies of the movements.

Then what can be studied, what underlies speech in a completely lawful way, can be transferred to the whole human being, to the movement of all his limbs. So that in eurythmy, through such a transference, you can, as it were, make the whole human being function on the stage like a human larynx, I would say. One could say: if the movements that are performed for vowels, consonants, sentence contexts, for the inner character, for the structure of the sentence, to which these movements correspond, were not the whole human being, but if what one sees were to be placed directly into the larynx, then nothing else would be expressed in the larynx than what you hear as the accompanying recitation.

However, this does not make the art of eurythmy something arbitrary, but something as internally lawful as the melodic or harmonic element in music is internally lawful. If something is initially based on gestures or facial expressions, then it is something that has not yet been overcome, [because] something as lawful as in music itself lives in eurythmy. And in what is heard at the same time, there is something like a harmonic element in music. [But this is only possible if] one also goes back to what is actually poetic in poetry. Poetry is not an art through its literal content, in a sense through the prosaic that underlies it, but poetry is poetry through rhythm, through beat, through everything that is incorporated into the literal content as form.

This is what is expressed through eurythmy. But it must also be expressed in the recitation that accompanies the eurythmy. Therefore, in order to be able to accompany the eurythmy with recitation, we must go back to the good old forms of recitation, which are avoided today precisely where one believes one is reciting well: to the rhythmic, to the not on the emphasis of the prose content, on which so much emphasis is placed today in what, especially in our very unartistic time, is called good recitation. Here too, it must be borne in mind that this recourse to eurythmy for a new artistic element makes very special demands on the art of recitation. Through the fact that this eurythmy attempts to impress upon the human being himself that which is otherwise impressed upon him through hearing in speech, the human being himself becomes the means of sensory expression of art. And because the movements are not intellectually shaped into gestures, but because the movements unfold in such a way that they are natural to the human being, like the movements of the larynx itself, the mere abstract thought, the intellectual, is bypassed and one sees directly for the artistic impression on the stage in the silent language of eurythmy something sensual and supersensory: the soul-filled movements of the human being.

You will therefore see that this eurythmic art is particularly suitable for the experiment I have tried to carry out in my 'mystery dramas', where the spiritual itself is to be expressed in many places. What is actually meant here will, of course, be misunderstood for a long time yet, because people do not yet realize that nature and thus man, through his intellect, is being forced into abstract natural laws. We will just have to learn to understand nature in line with what Goethe means when he says: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit. To do this, he rises to the challenge by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking number, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art. Thus man creates within himself a new, significant summit and then rises to produce the work of art.

What must this work of art be like? We can only imagine it as an ideal. Perhaps we may say that when the human being regards himself with his whole organism as a tool, as the instrument for producing this work of art, it is indeed the case that, through the fact that this eurythmy appears in this particular form, something is present that perhaps – I am not saying that it is already this ideal art – but that it provides something from which one can see how one must create forms in order to arrive at the sensual-supersensible.

That is the essential thing: neither the sensual nor the supersensible alone, but the sensual-supersensible – the sensual-supersensible that appears to us as if the forms of the idea or of the ideational had already lived in us, and that appears to us with such vividness that we find the idea itself as something taking place in the sensory world. To bring the idea to the sensual, or to present the sensual world in the form of the idea: this is what can be brought about most vividly, precisely through this particular art form of eurythmy.

But I also ask you today to be lenient with what we can bring to you today, because, as I said, we are only just beginning. Those of you who have attended our performances more often may have noticed how we have been trying to make progress recently, but it must continue to happen more and more. Either we or others will be able to develop what is in its infancy today to a greater perfection. Be assured, my dear audience, that with eurythmy a beginning has been made to something that will surely one day be able to stand alongside other, older art forms as a complete art.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

As usual, I would like to say a few words before the eurythmy performances today about the way in which we are trying, within this eurythmic art, to seek first of all a kind of new artistic form, to seek new means of expression, and then, in a certain way, to go back to the source of artistic activity in human nature itself.

On this stage you will see movements of the limbs and of the whole human being in space, changing movements and changing positions of people in groups. All of this is meant to be a kind of silent language. But not a mute language that consists of random gestures, so that one would have to search for gestures to accompany the poetry that is recited at the same time, or for the song-like, musical elements. Nor are random gestures sought here for what is to be expressed, just as the sound of speech itself or the word is something that is added “by chance” to the meaning, as it is something that connects itself through the human organization with the meaning that the sound is to express.

To create such art, it was truly necessary to make use of what, according to Goethe, can be called sensuous-suprasensuous intuition.

When we follow human speech, we first turn our attention to the spoken sound or the sequence of sounds. We do not become aware – this is inherent in the whole organization of language – of the fact that our organs, which have something to do with the production of speech, carry out movements. These movements are, of course, small rhythmic movements, but they are based on movement tendencies. Those who are able to follow speech in a certain sense can really see these movement tendencies. They can get a picture of the movement tendencies present in the larynx and its neighboring organs, while speech sounds phonetically to us.

What we observe in speech, whether it is a single organ or a system of organs at work during speech, can be applied to the human organism as a whole. However, as I will explain in a moment, this is not as simple as it may seem, but requires a certain metamorphic transformation. Just as Goethe arrived at his view of metamorphosis as that which must underlie a true organicity, so too must we strive for such a view of human functions that allows us to recognize how a single group of functions — that is, underlying speech movement — can be connected to a possible movement of the whole person, just as Goethe saw the whole plant only as a more complicated, metamorphosed leaf or petal [or] also as stamens. This view, which Goethe applied only to the morphological, can be extended to the functional; it can be permeated artistically. But just as one can follow the larynx's main tendency, in that it comes into direct contact with the external air when speaking and is transformed into small rhythmic movements, , another element comes more to the fore in this transmission of the movement of the sounds to the whole person than it comes to the fore in the movement of the sounds, namely the element of will, also the element of willing feeling.

In our language, thought, imagination, and will, feeling, willing feeling, and feeling will all flow into each other. We do not need to distinguish these things, because in fact only the imagination and the will are actually juxtaposed. And in the artistic contemplation, we always have to fight, I would even say, against too much of what is the perception, what is the idea, flowing into the artwork in the direct perception of the image – but not in the image as we otherwise perceive it in nature, but rather in the spiritualized image. That is what should actually work in the perception and creation of art.

Now, when we look at nature in ordinary life or even in science, we transform the image through thought into what it then is as a spiritualized image. In this way, we lift it out of the sphere of the merely artistic. In the artistic, the image should have an immediate spiritual effect. In a sense, as an image it should already affect us in the same way that thought otherwise affects us. But as soon as thought affects us as thought, the artistic aspect ceases, the artistic is paralyzed, and in our language there is actually less and less possibility for artistic expression – even in poetry – as civilization advances. It becomes more and more conventional as a spoken language, it becomes a form of expression for that which we want to present in an abstract, intellectual way. As a result, our poetry actually becomes impoverished in terms of its means of expression. But basically, there is only so much that is truly artistic in poetry, as there is music on the one hand or imagery on the other.

Pictorial, plastic is meant here in such a way that, by listening to language, to poetically shaped language, one immediately perceives a kind of image in sound as well. We then rid the poem of everything that flows from the thought into the poem when we begin, as we usually begin, to transfer the tendencies of movement that the larynx and its neighboring organs carry out to the whole person. By undertaking this metamorphosis of the function of speech and now looking at the whole human being – of course it cannot come to phonation because we are considering the macrocosmic movements, the movement tendencies instead of the microcosm – that which we extract from the spoken word is the will element, that will element that is bound to the whole human being. Therefore, if the human being as a whole appears, so to speak, like a larynx in lively motion, we have expressed that, the form of expression given by the human being himself.

But at the same time, we also have the opportunity to perceive what confronts us in the human being as an image, without philosophizing about it, by first spiritualizing it. The spiritualized image arises from the fact that the human being, who is spiritualized in his movement, becomes this image, so that we can have the spiritualized image directly in our perception. Through this inspired image, which can become a means of expression in poetry in an equally natural way through a silent language, we have actually achieved much of what art must strive for: to create the inspired image without having to take the detour through the intellect, through thinking, which has a deadening effect on art.

Of course, the recitation that accompanies the eurythmy must then take care to extract precisely what is actually artistic, not the prose content of the poem. Today, because we live in an unartistic time, reciters actually attach the greatest importance to the prose content, to the convention of the literal. The artistic person does not feel the essence in this emphasis on the literal of the poetry, but in the emphasis on the rhythms, the cadences, the musical or even the pictorial-sculptural, formative. Therefore, recitation, in so far as it is to accompany eurythmy, must return to the good old forms of recitation, to which Goethe naturally felt himself bound. He, who felt artistically, rehearsed his 'Iphigenia' with his artistic personnel, like a conductor with the baton in his hand, with an eye to form rather than content. And Schiller always had, before he had the literal content in his soul – at least with many of his poems – an indeterminate melodious connection that hummed within him, and then he sought out the literal text, the content.

If you look at the one hand at what is brought forth from the human being as a mute language, just as arbitrarily as the spoken language, you will find it accompanied on the other hand by the music. It is only a different side of what appears in these two arts. Furthermore, I believe that one can only create something that actually presents itself as a kind of new art form alongside our older art forms in eurythmy.

When we turn to the visual arts, we need, as it were, to first calm the things that are moving within us. The musical and the poetic, which are indeed moving, must work at the same time with such a strong power of internalization that the external sensory impression often recedes. Even in purely musical, absolutely musical works, the external sensory impression is juxtaposed with an internalization. But it is precisely because music, when it appears as pure music, can still speak to the pure senses that it retains the purely artistic. By contrast, we do not find what I would call plastic movement in those areas of art that are considered traditional. Sculpture that is artistically formed and does not depend on standing simply in repose, in form, in calm shape-shaping, but sculpture that can take human movement as its starting point: this simultaneously becomes eurythmy, which is based on listening to the movement tendencies of the human speech organs and applying them to the whole human being.

You will see from the experiment that I have just carried out, with the presentation of what underlies the world spiritually, which is then connected with the essence of the human being - which is already conceived poetically in such a way that one counts on there being more in reality than is provided by the mere, abstract laws of nature formulated in intellectual form — that this can most easily be represented in eurythmy.

As with all eurythmy in the present day, one will probably have to encounter misunderstandings and hostility in our time because it is simply believed today that what essentially underlies things must be able to be grasped in an intellectual form. But nature creates in images, and therefore we can only approach nature in its actual creation and weaving of the world if we engage with images. And so what Goethe meant will come true when he said: “To whom nature reveals its secret, longs for its most worthy interpreter, art.

For Goethe, art was something that combined – I would say in continuous metamorphosis – with mere scientific knowledge. So that one might truly find the truest truth in the moment when the whole human being is set in motion, in lawful motion, which is at the same time the expression as is speech itself, that one might find the truest truth in the Goethean saying: in the artistic one has a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never be revealed without this artistic manifestation.

That is one side, the artistic side, which is initially more important for the outside world. However, it should be noted that, beyond the artistic aspect, there is also an important hygienic-therapeutic aspect to this eurythmy, the soul-inspired movement. And that this soul-inspired movement has also been added for children, in their education, so that this soul-inspired movement is added to gymnastics, which is actually based solely on the physiological view of the human being. When we are able to judge more impartially, we will recognize that gymnastics, while it makes the muscles strong, does not at the same time help to bring the initiative out of the soul and to shape the will. Therefore, I believe that once this eurythmy can be introduced into the teaching plans, as we have already done at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which is based on these important educational principles, it will turn out that the children will take with them into life a very essential, a certain culture of the will, the cultivation of which is so important in the present day: a soul-inspired culture of the will, a culture of the will that is not merely a child of the physiological view of the human being, but a child of the psychological view of the human being.

That is why we will also show you something done only by children after the break, so to speak also a sample of children's eurythmy. But please be aware that our performances must still be viewed with leniency. We are our own harshest critics in these early days, because it is only a beginning. It is an experiment. But just as those of our esteemed audience who have been here before will probably be able to see that we have tried hard and really improved from month to month, we will continue to try to turn this beginning into something more complete. And we can be convinced that although we are still at the very beginning of this eurythmic art, it is capable of such perfection that it will be able to present itself as a young art alongside the older arts - as a fully-fledged art alongside other fully-fledged art forms.