Eurythmy as Visible Speech
GA 277d
26 December 1923, Dornach
A1. How Does Eurythmy Stand with Regard to the Artistic Development of the Present Day?
On the occasion of the Foundation Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society.
The nature of eurythmy has certainly been repeatedly discussed before the most varied groups of our friends, lately also it was presented in the most varied way in the Goetheanum,1See Rudolf Steiner, foreword to a eurythmy performance in ‘Das Goetheanum’ Year 3, No. 7. 23rd Sept., 1925. and it is indeed unnecessary to speak at this performance, which is to be given exclusively to our friends about the essential nature of eurythmy, about the basic principles, which are known to all. Yet I should like to characterize again and again from a certain standpoint both the way in which eurythmy stands in the artistic development of the present and what its position among the arts in general is. To-day I will speak a few words about how eurythmy must in fact, as it were from its very nature, be drawn out from the being of man by a spiritual world-conception, which, in accordance with the signs of the times, is making itself felt in our present age.
We look at another art which portrays the human being—the plastic art, which portrays him in his quiescent form. Whoever approaches plastic art with a certain feeling for form, whoever experiences the human being, human characteristics, through a plastic work of art does so in the best way when he has the feeling: here the human being is silent, speaking through his quiescent form.
Now we know that in the eighteenth century Lessing wrote a paper on the limits of plastic art,—it was not called that, but that was its content,—in which he said that sculpture should in its very nature be a manifestation of that which is at rest, of that which is silent in man,—in man as a being placed into the cosmos. So that sculpture can only express that which manifests itself as silence, as stillness, in the human being. Hence any attempt to represent the human being in movement through the medium of sculpture will undoubtedly prove to be an artistic error.
In times gone by, indeed up to the time of the Renaissance, it was a matter of course that plastic art could only represent the human being in a state of rest. For it may be said: This age, which began with ancient Greece and ended with the Renaissance, was mainly concerned with the development in the human being of the intellectual soul. With regard to the inner configuration of man’s being, the sentient soul, the mind soul and the consciousness soul,—it is the mind soul, embracing as it does all that is connected with the human mind, that holds the middle place; and the mind is in fact permeated with that quiescent feeling which also comes to expression in the quiescent human form.
We live to-day in an age in which we must advance from the feeling element in man to the will element; for fundamentally speaking it is the descent into the will element which, if consciously achieved, would enable us to-day to attain to spiritual insight.
This brings us to the point where we may turn our spiritual gaze to the human being in movement; not to the human being who, as the expression of the Cosmic Word, remained silent in order to rest in form, but to the human being as he stands in the living weaving of the Cosmic Word, bringing his organism into activity in accordance with his cosmic environment.
It is this clement in man which must find expression in eurythmy. And if one is able to observe things from the point of view of the spiritual science which is suited to the humanity of to-day, one will always have the feeling that form must become fluidic. Let us look at a human hand. Its silence finds expression in its quiescent form. What then is the meaning of this quiescent form when the human being as a whole is taken into consideration? Its meaning is apparent when the quiescent element of feeling is allowed to hold sway as it did hold sway from the age of the ancient Greeks to the time of the Renaissance. There is certainly great significance in such a gesture as this, in which I indicate something with my hand, then allowing it to remain in a state of rest. But it does not enable us to understand what must be realized to-day with regard to man, it does not enable us to understand the human being in his totality.
It is indeed impossible to understand the human form, when observing the human being as a whole, unless one is conscious of the fact that every motionless form in man has meaning only because it is able to pass over into definite movement. What would be the significance of the human hand if it were compelled to remain motionless. Even in its motionless state the form of the hand is such as to demand movement.
When one studies the human being with that inner mobility which is essential to the Spiritual Science of to-day, then from out of the quiescent form, movement reveals itself on all sides. It is not too much to say that anyone who visits a museum containing sculpture belonging to the best periods of plastic art, and who looks at the figures with the inner vision arising out of the spiritual knowledge of our time, will see these figures descend from their stands, move about the room and meet each other, becoming on all sides enfilled with movement.
And eurythmy,—now eurythmy arises naturally out of sculpture. And to learn to understand this is our task also. To-day people gifted with a certain spiritual mobility feel disturbed if obliged to look for a long time at a motionless Greek statue. They have to force themselves to do it. This can, and indeed must be done in order not to spoil the Greek statue in one’s own personal fantasy. But at the same time the urge remains to bring movement into this motionless form. As a consequence there arises that moving sculpture to which we give the name of Eurythmy. Here the Cosmic Word is itself, movement. In eurythmy man is no longer silent but through his movement communicates innumerable cosmic secrets.
It is indeed always the case that man communicates through his own being numberless secrets of the universe. One can, however, have yet another cosmic feeling. Anyone who has a living understanding for such descriptions of cosmic evolution as are to be found in my Outline of Occult Science will realize from the outset that, in the case of the human form of to-day, it is as though one had allowed an inner mobility to become dried up, to become rigid. One need only to look back to the time of the Old Moon. The human being was then in a continual state of metamorphosis. Such a definitely formed nose, such definitely formed ears as man has to-day, these did not exist at that time. The once mobile forms had to become frozen. He who with his vision can transport himself into the time of the Old Moon, to him people to-day often appear as frozen, immobile beings, incapable of metamorphosis. And what we achieve by means of eurythmy, when we make it into a visible speech, is no less than this: The bringing of movement, of fluidity, into the frozen human form.
This demands a study which must in its very nature be artistic. In this sphere everything intellectualistic is positively harmful. Eurythmy is and must remain an art.
Just consider for a moment that some such eurythmy form as you have sometimes seen here in connection with poems which really have in their experience and structure the profundity, for instance, of the poems of Steffen, just consider that such a form would best be found when, let us say—one imagines ten or twelve people of the present day. You are certainly all individually different with regard to your external form; but one can say of every person, no matter whether he has a round or long head, a pointed or blunt nose,—one can say of every person how, in the case of a poem, he would move his etheric body. And it would certainly be interesting for one to take those sitting in a certain row and show how, in the case of a poem, each one of those sitting here would move in accordance with his own form, if this came about entirely from the individual characteristics of the person in question. Here are sitting, for instance, eight people in this row. In such a case quite different eurythmy forms would arise from the human form. This would be very interesting. One would have to look at many people in order to say how the human being would move for “Und es wallet und woget und brauset und zischt”.
And then one gets the idea of how the forms are necessary. Thus eurythmy is born wholly out of the moving human form, but one must be able to take up such a standpoint that, when asked why the form for a poem is such and such, one must say: Yes, that is how it is! If anyone demands an intellectual explanation in justification of such a form, then one will feel annoyed to give it, because that is really inartistic. Eurythmy is created entirely out of feeling and can also only be understood through feeling.
Of course one must learn certain things, the letters must be learned, and so on. But after all, when you write a letter, here also you do not think about how an i or a b is written, but you write because you are able to do so. The point, then, is not how the eurythmist must learn a, b, c but to enjoy what comes out of it in the end.
What must develop out of eurythmy is a newly created, moving sculpture. And for this living sculpture one must of course make use of the human being himself; here one cannot use clay or marble. This leads into a realm of art which, in the profoundest sense, touches reality just where sculpture departs from it. Sculpture portrays that which is dead in the human being, or at least that which is death-like in its rigidity. Eurythmy portrays all that in the human being which is of the nature of life itself. For this reason eurythmy can call forth the feeling of how the universal cosmic life laid hold of man and placed him into earthly evolution, giving him his earthly task. There is perhaps no other art through which one can experience man’s relationship to the cosmos so vividly as one is able to do through the art of eurythmy. Therefore this art of eurythmy, based as it is on the etheric forces in man, had to appear just at that time a modern Spiritual Science was being sought. For it was out of this modern Spiritual Science that eurythmy had to be born.
Ansprache zur Eurythmie
Meine lieben Freunde!
Das Wesen der Eurythmie ist ja vor den verschiedensten Gruppen unserer Freunde wiederholt besprochen worden, zuletzt auch in verschiedenster Art im «Goetheanum» dargestellt worden, und ich habe wohl bei diesen Vorstellungen, die ausschließlich vor unseren Freunden stattfinden, nicht notwendig, über dieses Grundwesen, über die Grundprinzipien, die alle kennen, zu sprechen. Doch möchte ich von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus immer wieder und wiederum die Art charakterisieren, wie sich Eurythmie auf der einen Seite in die künstlerische Entwicklung der Gegenwart hineinstellt und wie ihre Stellung in der Reihe der Künste überhaupt ist. Heute will ich ein paar Worte darüber sprechen, wie ja Eurythmie in der Tat gewissermaßen naturgemäß aus der menschlichen Wesenheit herausgeholt werden muss von einer spirituellen Weltanschauung, die gerade aus den Zeichen der Welt heraus in unserer Gegenwart sich geltend macht.
Wir sehen auf eine andere Kunst, die den Menschen darstellt, auf die Kunst der Plastik, die ihn darstellt in seiner ruhenden Form. Derjenige, der mit einer gewissen Empfindung für Formen und für Bildhaftigkeit an die Plastik herantritt und dann dasjenige, was er empfindet gegenüber Mensch und Menschlichem, sich vorhält durch ein plastisches Kunstwerk, der wird die Empfindung bekommen: Der Mensch wird im plastischen Kunstwerke gerade dann in der besten Weise dargestellt, wenn man das Gefühl hat, dies ist der schweigende Mensch, der durch seine ruhende Form spricht.
Und wir wissen ja, wie im achtzehnten Jahrhundert Lessing eine Schrift geschrieben hat über die Grenze der bildenden Kunst und der redenden Kunst - sie heißt nicht so, aber sie handelt davon -, in der er darstellt, wie auch das Plastische durchaus die Ruhe im Menschen offenbaren soll, das Schweigen des Menschen als eines in den Kosmos hineingestellten Wesens, sodass man eigentlich nur dasjenige plastisch ausdrücken kann, was schweigend sich offenbart am Menschen. Und jedes Mal, wenn man versucht, durch die Plastik den bewegten Menschen auszudrücken, so kommt man eigentlich in eine künstlerische Verirrung hinein.
Nun ist es dem verflossenen Zeitalter — das aber eigentlich schon endete mit der Renaissance — naturgemäß gewesen, bloß diesen ruhenden Menschen plastisch darzustellen. Denn man kann sagen: Dieses Zeitalter, das im alten Griechentum beginnt und in der Renaissance endet, das wendet sich ja vorzugsweise an die Gemütsseele des Menschen. Ich habe das oftmals ausgesprochen: Von den inneren Gliedern der menschlichen Wesenheit - der Empfindungsseele, der Gemütsseele und der Bewusstseinsseele — ist die Gemütsseele, also der ganze Umfang des Menschengemütes, der mittlere Teil, und das Gemüt ist eigentlich erfüllt von dem ruhenden Gefühl, das sich in der ruhenden menschlichen Form auch ausspricht.
[Wir stehen nun in dem Zeitalter], in dem wir vorrücken müssen von dem Gefühlsmomente im Menschen zu den Willenselemente - denn im Grunde genommen ist es das Hinuntersteigen in das Willenselement, das uns heute, wenn wir dieses Hinuntersteigen erkenntnismäßig machen können, dazu bringt, spirituelle Einsichten zu bekommen. Damit aber kommen wir gerade mit unserer spirituellen Anschauung an den bewegten Menschen heran, an den Menschen, der als Ausdruck des Weltenwortes sozusagen nicht gesprochen hat und dann schweigt, um in der Form zu ruhen, sondern wir kommen an den Menschen, der im lebendigen Weben des Weltenwortes drinnen steht und seinen Organismus im Sinne dieses Drinnen-Stehens betätigt. Damit aber kommen wir eben an dasjenige, was sich als Eurythmisches ausleben will. Und man hat, wenn man erfassen will gerade von dem geisteswissenschaftlichen Standpunkte, der der heutigen Zeit angemessen ist, den Menschen, man hat immer das Gefühl, man muss die Form ins Flüssige bringen.
Man sehe sich eine menschliche Hand an: Ihr Schweigen kommt in ihrer ruhenden Form zur Offenbarung. Was hat denn diese ruhende Form für einen Sinn, wenn man den ganzen Menschen betrachtet? Sie hat einen Sinn, wenn man das ruhende Element des Gefühls walten lässt, wie es gewaltet hat von der alten Griechenzeit bis zur Renaissancezeit, Da, muss man sagen, liegt etwas Bedeutsames darinnen, wenn ich die Hand forme zum Hinweisen auf irgendetwas und sie dann ruhend lasse. Aber dann erfassen wir doch nicht dasjenige, was heute notwendig ist, am Menschen zu sehen, den ganzen Menschen in seiner Totalität. Und man kann einfach die menschliche Form, wenn man den ganzen Menschen ansieht, nicht ins Seelenauge fassen, wenn man sich nicht bewusst wird, wie jede einzelne ruhende Form am Menschen nur einen Sinn hat dadurch, dass sie in eine bestimmte Bewegung übergehen kann. Was wäre denn die menschliche Hand, wenn sie nur ruhen müsste? Sie hat schon auch als ruhende die Form, die die Bewegung fordert.
Studiert man also mit innerer Beweglichkeit, wie man es heute in der Geisteswissenschaft tun muss, den Menschen, dann offenbart sich einem überall aus der ruhenden Form die bewegte heraus. Und man möchte sagen: Derjenige, der heute durch ein Museum geht, wo die Plastiken sind, die aus den guten Zeiten des plastischen Schaffens heraus sind, und der diese Plastiken ansieht mit dem Seelenauge der
heutigen spirituellen Erkenntnis, für den steigen diese Plastiken herunter von ihren Podien; sie gehen in den Sälen herum, sie begegnen sich, sie werden überall hin beweglich.
Und Eurythmie - nun, Eurythmie entsteht ja selbstverständlich aus der Plastik. Diese Aufgabe haben wir auch. Es stört heute den in sich beweglichen spirituellen Menschen, wenn er die ruhende griechische Statue längere Zeit ansehen muss. Er muss sich zwingen. Man kann ja das, und man muss es auch, um die griechische Statue natürlich nicht in der eigenen Phantasie zu verderben. Aber daneben besteht überall der Drang, diese ruhende Form in Bewegung zu bringen. Dadurch entsteht jene bewegte Plastik, die die Eurythmie ist. Da ist das Weltenwort das Bewegende. Da schweigt der Mensch nicht mehr, sondern erzählt durch seine Bewegung unendliche Weltengeheimnisse.
Und das ist ja überhaupt so, dass der Mensch durch seine eigene Wesenheit unendliche Weltengeheimnisse erzählt. Man kann noch ein anderes kosmisches Gefühl haben. Für denjenigen, der lebendig auffasst das, was sich zum Beispiel für die kosmische Entwicklung in meiner «Geheimwissenschaft» findet, für den ist es ja von vorherein klar, dass es eigentlich mit der heutigen menschlichen Gestalt so ist, als ob man ein An-sich-Bewegliches hätte vertrocknen lassen, erstarren lassen. Man denke nur zurück an die alte Mondenzeit. Da war der Mensch ganz in Metamorphose begriffen. So eine fest bestimmte Nase, so fest bestimmte Ohren, wie sie der Mensch heute hat, das hat’s ja damals noch nicht gegeben. Dazumal hatten die damals beweglichen Formen erst gefrieren müssen. Derjenige, der sich mit seiner Anschauung in der alten Mondenzeit bewegen kann, dem erscheinen manchmal die gegenwärtigen Menschen wie gefrorene, nicht bewegliche, sich metamorphosierende Wesenheiten. Und dasjenige, was wir mit Eurythmie leisten, indem wir sie zu einer sichtbaren Sprache machen, das ist einfach das, dass wir die eingefrorene Menschengestalt wiederum in Flüssigkeit bringen.
Dazu gehört ein Studium, das wirklich nur künstlerisch sein kann. Alles Nachdenken, das ist auf diesem Gebiete eigentlich von großem Schaden. Künstlerisch muss es sein. Bedenken Sie nur einmal, dass man so eine eurythmische Form, wie sie Sie manchmal hier bei Gedichten, die zum Beispiel wirklich von solcher Tiefe sind der Empfindung und der Gestaltung wie die Steffen’schen, dass eine solche Form eigentlich am besten gefunden wird, wenn man sich, sagen wir zehn oder zwölf Menschen der Gegenwart vorstellt. Sie sind ja alle individuell verschieden in Bezug auf ihre äußere Gestalt. Aber man kann von jedem Menschen, gleichgültig ob er einen runden oder langen Kopf hat, eine spitze oder eine stumpfe Nase hat, man kann von jedem Menschen sagen, wie er sich bei einem Gedichte seinem Ätherleib nach bewegen will.
Und es wäre ja zum Beispiel einmal interessant, so eine Sitzreihe zu nehmen und darzustellen das, wie ein jeder hier Sitzende sich bei einer Gedichtreihe aus seiner Gestalt heraus bewegen würde, wenn das ganz nach der individuellen Eigenart des Menschen gehen würde. Da sitzen zum Beispiel acht Menschen in dieser Reihe - ganz verschiedene Formen würden aus der menschlichen Gestalt dabei herauskommen! Sehr interessant wäre es. Man muss viele Menschen sich anschauen, um sich zu sagen: Wie würde sich der Mensch bewegen bei «Und es wallet und woget und brauset und zischt»? Und dann kommt man darauf, wie die Formen notwendig sind.
Also, Eurythmie ist ganz herausgeboren aus der bewegten Menschengestalt, aber man muss auf den Gesichtspunkt stehen können, dass man, wenn man gefragt wird, warum eine Form für ein Gedicht so und so ist, dass man sagen muss: Ja, es ist halt so. Wenn einem jemand abfordert nach dem Verstande, man solle ihm eine solche Form rechtfertigen, dann wird man unwillig, weil das eigentlich unkünstlerisch ist. Eurythmie ist eben ganz aus dem Gefühl heraus geschaffen und kann auch nur durch das Gefühl verstanden werden.
Gewiss, man muss einiges lernen — Buchstaben muss man lernen und so weiter. Aber schließlich, wenn Sie einen Brief anfangen zu schreiben, so denken Sie ja auch nicht daran, wie ein i oder ein b ist, sondern Sie schreiben, weil Sie das schon können. Und so ist auch dasjenige nicht zu genießen, was der einzelne Eurythmist als ABC lernen muss, sondern dasjenige, was zuletzt daraus wird. Und das ist - so unvollkommen es heute noch ist - eine neu geschaffene, bewegte Plastik. Nur natürlich muss man zur bewegten Plastik ja den Menschen selbst verwenden, da kann man nicht Plastilin oder Marmor verwenden, da muss man den Menschen selbst verwenden.
Damit aber gelangt man in ein Kunstgebiet, das sich zu gleicher Zeit im tiefsten Sinne ebenso berührt mit der Wirklichkeit, wie sich die Plastik entfernt von der Wirklichkeit. Die Plastik gibt dasjenige vom Menschen, was tot ist, was wenigstens im Tode erstarrt ist. Die Eurythmie gibt dasjenige im Menschen, was aus allen Elementen heraus Leben ist. Daher kann man durch Eurythmie fühlen, wie das allgemeine kosmische Leben den Menschen erfasst hat und hineingestellt hat in seine irdische Aufgabe. Vielleicht bei keiner Kunst kann man in einer so intensiven Art das Hineingestelltsein des Menschen in den Kosmos verspüren, empfinden, als bei der eurythmischen Kunst. Deshalb musste diese eurythmische Kunst, weil sie auf das Ätherische im Menschen geht, in einer Zeit auftreten, in der gerade die heutige Geisteswissenschaft gesucht wird. Und sie musste aus dieser heutigen Geisteswissenschaft heraus eigentlich geboren werden.
Einiges andere werde ich mir dann erlauben anzufügen bei der nächsten Eurythmie-Vorstellung.
Eurythmy Performance
My dear friends!
The essence of eurythmy has been discussed repeatedly before various groups of our friends, most recently also presented in various ways in the Goetheanum, and I do not need to talk about this fundamental essence, about the basic principles that everyone knows, at these presentations, which take place exclusively before our friends. However, from a certain point of view, I would like to characterize again and again the way in which eurythmy fits into the artistic development of the present and how it stands in the series of the arts in general. Today I would like to say a few words about how eurythmy must, in a sense, be drawn out of the human being by a spiritual worldview that asserts itself in our present time precisely from the signs of the world.
We look at another art that represents the human being, the art of sculpture, which represents him in his resting form. Those who approach sculpture with a certain sensitivity to form and imagery, and then hold up what they feel about human beings and humanity in front of a sculptural work of art, will have the feeling that human beings are best represented in sculptural works of art when one has the feeling that this is the silent human being who speaks through his or her resting form.
And we know how, in the eighteenth century, Lessing wrote a treatise on the boundary between the visual arts and the spoken arts—it is not called that, but it deals with this subject — in which he describes how sculpture should also reveal the tranquility in human beings, the silence of human beings as beings placed in the cosmos, so that one can actually only express sculpturally that which is revealed silently in human beings. And every time one tries to express the moving human being through sculpture, one actually ends up in an artistic aberration.
Now, it was natural for the past age — which actually ended with the Renaissance — to depict only this resting human being in sculpture. For one can say that this age, which begins in ancient Greece and ends in the Renaissance, addresses primarily the emotional soul of the human being. I have often said that of the inner members of the human being — the feeling soul, the soul of the mind, and the soul of consciousness — the soul of the mind, that is, the whole scope of the human mind, is the middle part, and the mind is actually filled with the resting feeling that is also expressed in the resting human form.
[We are now in an age] in which we must advance from the feeling moments in human beings to the elements of the will — for, basically, it is the descent into the element of the will that leads us today, if we can make this descent cognitively, to gain spiritual insights. But with our spiritual view, we come precisely to the moving human being, to the human being who, as an expression of the world word, has not spoken, so to speak, and then remains silent in order to rest in form, but rather we come to the human being who stands within the living weaving of the world word and activates his organism in the sense of this standing within. But this brings us to that which wants to express itself as eurythmy. And if one wants to understand the human being from the spiritual scientific point of view that is appropriate to the present time, one always has the feeling that one must bring form into fluidity.
Look at a human hand: its silence is revealed in its resting form. What is the meaning of this resting form when we consider the whole human being? It has meaning when we allow the resting element of feeling to prevail, as it did from ancient Greek times to the Renaissance. There, we must say, is something significant in forming the hand to point to something and then leaving it at rest. But then we do not grasp what is necessary today to see in human beings, the whole human being in its totality. And when we look at the whole human being, we simply cannot grasp the human form in the eye of the soul unless we become aware of how every single resting form in human beings has meaning only insofar as it can transition into a certain movement. What would the human hand be if it only had to rest? Even when at rest, it has the form that demands movement.
So if we study the human being with inner mobility, as we must do today in spiritual science, then the moving form reveals itself everywhere from the resting form. And one is tempted to say: anyone who walks through a museum today, where the sculptures are from the golden age of sculptural creation, and who looks at these sculptures with the soul's eye of
today's spiritual insight, for them these sculptures descend from their pedestals; they walk around the halls, they encounter each other, they become mobile everywhere.
And eurythmy—well, eurythmy naturally arises from sculpture. We also have this task. Today, it disturbs the spiritually mobile person when they have to look at the static Greek statue for a long time. They have to force themselves. Of course, one can do that, and one must do it, in order not to spoil the Greek statue in one's own imagination. But alongside this, there is a universal urge to set this static form in motion. This gives rise to the dynamic sculpture that is eurythmy. Here, the word of the world is the moving force. Here, the human being no longer remains silent, but tells infinite secrets of the world through their movement.
And it is indeed the case that human beings tell infinite secrets of the world through their very being. One can have another cosmic feeling. For those who vividly grasp what is found, for example, in my “Secret Science” about cosmic development, it is clear from the outset that the present human form is actually as if something that was originally mobile had been allowed to dry up and become rigid. Just think back to the ancient lunar era. At that time, human beings were in the midst of metamorphosis. The fixed shape of the nose and ears that human beings have today did not exist back then. The forms that were mobile at that time first had to freeze. Those who can move with their perception into the ancient lunar period sometimes see present-day human beings as frozen, immobile, metamorphosing beings. And what we achieve with eurythmy, by making it a visible language, is simply that we bring the frozen human form back into fluidity.
This requires a study that can really only be artistic. All thinking in this area is actually very harmful. It must be artistic. Just consider that a eurythmic form such as you sometimes find here in poems that are truly as profound in feeling and form as Steffen's, for example, is actually best found when you imagine, say, ten or twelve people of the present. They are all individually different in terms of their outward appearance. But regardless of whether a person has a round or long head, a pointed or blunt nose, one can say of each person how they want to move their etheric body when listening to a poem.
And it would be interesting, for example, to take a row of seats and depict how each person sitting here would move in a series of poems based on their shape, if this were to be done entirely according to the individual characteristics of the person. For example, there are eight people sitting in this row—very different shapes would emerge from the human form! It would be very interesting. You have to look at many people to say to yourself: How would a person move to “And it billows and surges and roars and hisses”? And then you realize how necessary the forms are.
So, Eurythmy is born entirely from the moving human form, but one must be able to take the point of view that when asked why a form for a poem is this way or that way, one must say: Yes, that's just how it is. If someone demands, based on reason, that one justify such a form, then one becomes unwilling, because that is actually unartistic. Eurythmy is created entirely from feeling and can only be understood through feeling.
Of course, you have to learn a few things—you have to learn letters and so on. But ultimately, when you start writing a letter, you don't think about what an i or a b looks like, you write because you already know how. And so it is not what the individual eurythmist has to learn as the ABCs that is to be enjoyed, but what ultimately becomes of it. And that is — as imperfect as it still is today — a newly created, moving sculpture. Of course, one must use human beings themselves for moving sculpture; one cannot use plasticine or marble, one must use human beings themselves.
But this brings us into an area of art that, at the same time, touches reality in the deepest sense, just as sculpture distances itself from reality. Sculpture gives us that part of the human being that is dead, or at least frozen in death. Eurythmy expresses that part of the human being which is life from all the elements. Through eurythmy, one can therefore feel how general cosmic life has taken hold of the human being and placed him in his earthly task. Perhaps in no other art form can one feel and sense the human being's place in the cosmos as intensely as in the art of eurythmy. Because it addresses the etheric in human beings, this art of eurythmy had to emerge at a time when today's spiritual science is being sought. And it actually had to be born out of this spiritual science of today.
I will take the liberty of adding a few other things at the next eurythmy performance.