Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 634

Beschreibung

With these fundamental lectures on speech eurythmy – given just months after his course entitled 'Eurythmy as Visible Singing' – Rudolf Steiner completed the foundations of the new art of movement. In connecting to the centuries-old esoteric and exoteric Western traditions of 'the Word' – the creative power in the sounds of the divine-human alphabet – he gave it concrete form and expression in the performing arts, education and therapy. Although aimed primarily at the professional concerns of eurythmists who perform, teach or work as therapists, the lectures offer a wealth of suggestions and insights to anyone interested in the arts.For this new edition – freshly translated by Matthew Barton and introduced by Coralee Frederickson – the original shorthand transcripts have been compared exhaustively with typed records and the notes of course participants. These notes included numerous sketches of movements, gestures and choreographies, many of which have been reproduced here to complement the text. Also featured is an appendix comprising facsimiles and transcripts of Rudolf Steiner's preparatory notes, programmes of the eurythmy performances given during the course, and accounts by Steiner published in the Society Newsletter. Finally, there are recollections by course participants, additional sketches of forms and movements, Marie Steiner's original foreword, and 30 pages of colour plates featuring blackboard drawings and eurythmy forms. Fifteen lectures, Dornach, Jun.-July 1924, GA 279. 32pp colour plates

Leseprobe

EURYTHMY AS SPEECH MADE VISIBLE

SPEECH EURYTHMY COURSE

Fifteen lectures given in Dornach from 24 June to 12 July 1924, with complementary materials (notebooks, programmes, board drawings, essays, reports and drawings by course participants)

TRANSLATED BY MATTHEW BARTON

INTRODUCTION BY CORALEE FREDERICKSON

RUDOLF STEINER

The publishers gratefully acknowledge the generous funding of the translation of these lectures by the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain

Rudolf Steiner PressHillside House, The SquareForest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

Originally published in German under the title Eurythmie als sichtbare Sprache (volume 279 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation is based on the sixth German edition of 2019, fully revised and enlarged by Martina Maria Sam and Stefan Hasler, based on lecture transcripts not reviewed by the lecturer

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 2019

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 651 7

Cover by Morgan CreativeTypeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Visakhapatnam, IndiaPrinted and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Introduction, by Coralee Frederickson

LECTURE ONEDORNACH, 24 JUNE 1924

The spirit of eurythmy as speech made visible. The arts of mime and dance as further development of naturally occurring human traits; eurythmy and speech as primary creations. The beginning of the Gospel of John. The Word once encompassed the whole human being as etheric creation. The sounds of speech as moving forms of the etheric body; the etheric human being as whole alphabet. What the soul can feelingly experience in the sounds of speech: a [ah]—the quality of wonder. The etheric larynx as metamorphosis of the uterus. Speech as a return to early cosmic human evolution. Ah as the beginning of knowledge, as the highest human perfection. e [eh]—this has done something to me that I sense and feel. i [ee]—having been inquisitive. The vowels: the original human being in his dignity. The consonants: the copying of something outward. b— something enveloping. I O A [ee-oh-ah]—almost the whole human soul. The human being as word spoken forth from the cosmos, created from dynamic movements. With eurythmy we return to the primordial movements. God does eurythmy—and this gives rise to the human form. This is an answer to the question as to how human beauty arises. Eurythmy as continuation of divine motion—in pedagogy and eurythmy therapy. The foundations for this in the sense of the connection between the human being and the divine.

LECTURE TWODORNACH, 25 JUNE 1924

The inner nature of the speech sounds. Imitation of the forms speech makes in the air in the letters of ancient languages such as Hebrew. The sound h: between vowel and consonant—blowing towards us. u [oo]—making cold, stiff. sch [sh]—blowing away. r—rolling, rotating. A primordial language underlies all languages. The wisdom of parallel nomenclatures: mother’s milk and mother tongue: the first shapes the physical body, the second the etheric body. Characterizing the nature of speech sounds from the perspectives of artistic, pedagogical and therapeutic eurythmy. a [ah]—wonder; b—enveloping, the house; c [ts]—lightness; d—pointing, shining towards; e [eh]—maintaining an upright stance. The Tao. t—shining, radiating. The sound f in Indian yoga and in the ancient mysteries: f—know this, that I know. i [ee]—firm self-assertion. l—the formative power that overcomes matter. ei [ai]—loving nestling. m—assuming the form of something. Example: Kopf—testa: sense of the head’s round form or the activity of utterance. Aum. Eurythmy as the shaping of cosmic gestures.

LECTURE THREEDORNACH, 26 JUNE 1924

Feeling the speech sounds in gestures. s—calming of what is in unrest. Symbol of the staff of Mercury. The s-symbol in the ancient mysteries. z [ts]—something seeks to be taken lightly. The a [ah] in its intrinsic nature: entering into the cosmos in two directions; encompassing the stretching of muscles; pure wonder. e [eh]—the after-effect of an occurrence; a part of the organism is connected with another. o [oh] relating to another with understanding; rounding from the outset; the world experiences something through the human being. i [ee]—purest self-assertion; feeling the stretching from the centre outwards. u [oo]—withdrawing; indication of joining, merging. b—everything that surrounds and envelops. Not only copying forms but having the corresponding feelings. c [ts]—raising the material into the spiritual. d—pointing in a particular direction, movements of indicating that land swiftly in succession. European and Oriental education; the dada. f—one experiences the wisdom within oneself, consciously exhaling; double onset. l—bringing something within one’s power; the arms become inwardly supple. m—understanding, grasping something; arms forward. n—dismissive understanding. r—revolving, rolling. Through eurythmy what we experience can pass over into the forming of gesture.

LECTURE FOURDORNACH, 27 JUNE 1924

More on f and s: f—calm mastery of what has been invoked in the world: s—masterful deflection. sch [sh]—blowing away. The character of various languages: German—plastic; Romance languages—testifying; Hungarian—hunting culture. The pedagogical element emerges from the nature of speech sounds: first use words containing feeling. k—mastering matter through the spirit; keep away, shoo. The speech sounds as primary constituents of eurythmy; feeling the word as a whole through the transitions between phonemes. The transition from the speech sounds to the inner reality of a word. The character of various languages can become tangible in eurythmy (examples): English, Hungarian, Russian, French. Eurythmy is predisposed to give expression to the nature of language. The eurythmy forms for abstract and concrete words. Affirmation and negation. Bringing together the nature of speech sounds with the feeling content intrinsic to language—the character of languages; logic—character of nations and peoples.

LECTURE FIVEDORNACH, 30 JUNE 1924

From the mood content of the speech sounds to the more general character of speech, the logical, feeling, articulation of a text through emphases. Question and exclamation marks. Gestures that give plastic-eurythmic expression to the motions of the soul: gaiety; damned clever; knowledge; i [ee] gesture as soul expression: self-assertion, delusion of grandeur; insatiability; inwardness; amiability; telling something; sadness; despair.

LECTURE SIXDORNACH, 1 JUNE 1924

Further soul moods: reverence, devotion; festive solemnity and knowledge. Categories of soul content: thinking, feeling, will; their shaping in spatial forms. The artistic element of poetry becomes apparent in the way language is handled. What comes to expression through colours: colour as a soul content located in the outer world. Acquiring colour feelings in relation to the speech sounds—the eurythmy figures for a, o, e, i, u [ah, oh, eh, ee, oo].

LECTURE SEVENDORNACH, 2 JUNE 1924

The effect of the plastic shaping of speech on eurythmy. Interpretation of plasticity through four kinds of consonants: blown sounds pass the outer world over to our human interiority; merging with the outer world—h, ch, j [y], sch [sh], s, f, w [v], v [f]. Plosives: asserting inwardness—d, t, b, p, g, k, m, n. The trill sound r and the undulating sound l—sounds of reflection. Blown sounds: running after them with the body. Plosives: we master the outer world—holding back movement, stiffening. The luciferic and ahrimanic qualities in these sounds. r—up and down movement; l—swaying movement. Speech sound transitions and word transitions. Diphthongs and umlauts: things become unclear—fluid motions. Dionysian and Apollonian vowels.

LECTURE EIGHTDORNACH, 3 JUNE 1924

From speech something passes into the spiritual world, and something into the physical. Umlauts and diphthongs—what is intrinsically spiritual lies between the sounds. The dual character of words—imitation of the world and seeking to place into context. Example: the form that emerges from meaning that arises in the joining of speech sounds, in the personal pronouns. Spatial forms for I, you, he, we, you [plural]. The Cloud-Illuminer. Examples for practical use of the forms.

LECTURE NINEDORNACH 4 JUNE 1924

Leading shaped or formed speech into the artistic realm. Threefold walking as expression of a will impulse. Speech between thought and feeling. In former times, people experienced feeling as inward, articulated resounding, and thinking as articulation in words. The gradual differentiation into artistically formed speech and pure music. The further path of speech from sound to meaning. The need to work one’s way into artistically formed speech, among other things by developing a feeling for rhythm. Will character in the iambic, realization of thinking in the trochaic meter. Anapaest—longing lags behind will, spiritualization of speech. The dactyl—dictating, asserting. Presenting the course of time in eurythmy; using the spatial forms to inhabit the poetic nature of speech. In artistically shaped speech turning to imagination, to what is not immediately real, through the image. The pictorial quality of speech sounds and images in poetic language. Shaping metaphor, synecdoche, metonym through walking in the spatial directions.

LECTURE TENDORNACH, 7 JUNE 1924

Developing gestures from our intrinsic human nature: potential movements and forms in the human organism—the whole human being in twelve stances and seven gestures. The twelvefold picture of the human being expressing himself through his form and the sevenfold summation of animal qualities within the human being. Nineteen speech-sound possibilities—of consonants in the zodiac, of vowels in the movement of the planets. Eurythmy as renewal of the temple dances that imitate the movements of stars and planets.

LECTURE ELEVENDORNACH, 8 JUNE 1924

Transition from the spiritual gesture to the speech-sound gesture: the spiritual lies in the transition from one speech sound to another. The speech sounds belonging to the zodiac signs and the planets. Examples of possible configurations with movements preceding and following sounds. Spatial forms arising from the speech sounds and spiritual gestures. These gestures introduce our eurythmy movements and stances into the organism. Respect for eurythmy must become a firmly established outlook. Finding our way into gesture and form.

LECTURE TWELVEDORNACH, 9 JUNE 1924

Zodiac and planetary gestures: how moral—experiencing-judging and judging-experiencing—impulses find their expression in gesture. How form and movement arise from the state of soul and work back upon it in turn. Discussion of previously given exercises from this perspective: I and you exercise; Peace Dance and Energy Dance. The combining of exercises and their use in education and therapeutic education. Curative educational effects of outwinding and inwinding spirals.

LECTURE THIRTEENDORNACH, 10 JUNE 1924

Inwinding and outwinding, rhythmically stepped spirals as question and answer, as a possibility for giving shape to dramatic dialogue. Therapeutic educational use of the exercises. Forms for the hallelujah. Evoe. Example of a soul mood drawn from the gesture of the speech sounds: mischievous irony. Peace Dance: ‘The Soul’s Wishes Bud’. How did poetic works arise from mystery centres? In real poetry, the poet’s etheric body is dancing—poetry contains eurythmy within it. The eurythmist must feel whether this is so in each poem. Eurythmy presentation of either will-tending or perceiving/surrendering impulses in poetry.

LECTURE FOURTEENDORNACH, 11 JUNE 1924

The structure of words in a train of thought—the parts of speech. Adjective, verb (active, passive, continuous), noun (sensory-concrete, spiritually tangible). Conditions relative to outward objects, qualities held fast in the soul, interjections. Leaps. Grace in eurythmy. Prepositions. Conjunctions. Doing poems in eurythmy according to their intrinsic forms: how we can create forms drawn from the structure, the configuration of a poem, illustrated by K. J. Schröer’s poem ‘Parting’. Awakening a particular mood of soul through a meditation that relates to the secrets of the human organization: ‘I seek within…’

LECTURE FIFTEENDORNACH, 12 JUNE 1924

The sounds g and w [v]: inward self-consolidation and mobile protectiveness. The w [v] has a close relationship with alliteration. On the nature of alliteration. The difference between standing and stepping in eurythmy. The body in its connection with the being of the cosmos—the feet are adapted to the earth, the hands and arms signify the soul element, the head exists for the spirit. Head stances: I will, I feel. Use of the zodiac and planetary gestures in various contexts, e.g. the performing of strong and weak rhymes. The six positions of ‘I think speech’. When doing eurythmy we must pay heed to the careful analysis of a poem in terms of its speech configuration. Paying heed to movement, feeling and character in the eurythmy figures to develop a feeling for the speech sounds. Educational and artistic eurythmy. In eurythmy practice and performance the body becomes soul. The meaning of repetition, rhythm. Eurythmy and anthroposophy.

APPENDIX:

Entries in Notebook 615

Entries in Notebook 238

Admission card for the speech eurythmy course

Programme of eurythmy performances on 29 June and 3, 6, 10 and 13 July in Dornach 1924

Articles by Rudolf Steiner related to the speech eurythmy course

‘To the Members. The Place of Eurythmy in the Anthroposophical Society’, 8 June 1924

‘To the Members. Speech Eurythmy Course’, 20 July 1924

Memories of Participants

Further sketches of movements and forms from Participants’ Notes

Foreword by Marie Steiner to the first edition of 1927

ABOUT THIS EDITION:

Origins and Context of the Course

The Notebooks

The Shorthand Records

The Title of the Book

The Board Drawings and the Eurythmy Figures

The Drawings in the Text

The Bases and Presentation of the Text

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

Plate Section:

Blackboard Drawings

Eurythmy Figures (Edith Maryon / Rudolf Steiner)

INTRODUCTION

RUDOLF Steiner laid the groundwork for the professional development of a surprising number of anthroposophical initiatives in 1924, including medicine, biodynamic farming, the Christian Community, curative education, speech and drama, and eurythmy. The ideas that helped establish these professions in the world flowed out of him as if he had achieved an overarching view that allowed him to see and communicate the essence of each profession, right into the practical details.

The two lecture series he gave on eurythmy in the first half of 1924, Eurythmy as Visible Singing (19 to 27 February) and Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible (24 June to 12 July) had this impact on the art of eurythmy. The eight lectures on music eurythmy added substantially to what was already developing. They were delivered to an intimate circle of eurythmists and close friends of the work, in a private room. By comparison, speech eurythmy had achieved a certain artistic niveau through earlier productions of the Mystery Dramas and Faust and international performances of poetry in English, Russian, and French as well as German. The second series of fifteen lectures on speech eurythmy, Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible, collected the body of indications that had been given to different people and, because of the great interest in this subject, was presented in the Carpenters’ Studio to a large audience of eurythmy students and eurythmists, Vorstand [Executive Council] members, and visitors attending other lectures that were being held simultaneously. According to a participant, they filled the room to the last chair.

Eurythmy was Rudolf Steiner’s creation, ‘a most beloved spiritual offspring’ according to Marie Steiner,1 and he lavished loving attention on it from the time of his first indications given to Lory Maier-Smits, the first eurythmist,2 until his death. His personal interest in the progress of eurythmy shows itself in small gestures. For example, despite his hectic schedule, he would sit down to draw a new form for a poem or piece of music during his lunch pause at the request of a eurythmist or Marie Steiner, or drop by a rehearsal in the evening and give a few essential indications to a single eurythmist or a group of them. Over the years, the art had developed organically, with indications given to other eurythmists besides Lory, notably to Tatjana Kisseleff,3 that expanded, and in some cases contradicted, earlier indications.

This led to the need for the definitive series of lectures in 1924 called ‘The Speech Course’, or when it came out as a publication, Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible. At the beginning of the first day, Steiner stated that this course would reiterate all the indications he had given over the preceding twelve years and ‘lay the foundations of an exact eurythmical tradition’.4 We can understand the word ‘tradition’ here to mean an articulation of the principles of this creative art as a basis for building and developing eurythmy further. That is, Rudolf Steiner’s intention was to gather all the indications he had given in a single bouquet as eurythmy approached twelve-and-a-half years of existence. By this time, eurythmy was truly blossoming and the tender shoot was beginning to form seeds of its own out of its own forces.

Indeed, Steiner did much more than simply bring together everything that had been given before. Rather, while re-combining and re-presenting these elements, he was also adding new material and, in a sense, re-creating everything, offering the audience an immediate, living experience of what the art had become and what it was capable of in the future. Annemarie Dubach-Donath, one of the young eurythmists present, captured this mood when she wrote in her autobiography:

While touching repeatedly on what had already been given, Rudolf Steiner led us in mighty steps far, far beyond these initial realms. His spiritual gaze surveyed the whole field of eurythmy: many seeds germinated, many blossoms opened, and lovingly he took one or the other in hand, freeing them from much that had, over time, come to constrict and hinder them; and then he grasped hold of a breathtaking wealth of new possibilities.5

According to Steiner’s opening comments in the course, it was Marie Steiner who had encouraged him to bring all the different threads together in one authoritative series of talks. In so saying, Steiner indirectly acknowledges her years of selflessly supporting the day-to-day development of eurythmy as a stage art, managing the daily rehearsing, programmeand tour-planning, speaking for practices and performances, and directing performances. One can easily imagine that, out of working hands-on with the art, she recognized a need for such an overview. If it is so that without her urging we would not have this course, we indeed owe a great deal to her because without these lectures we can question whether we would have the vital eurythmic tradition that we have today. Speech eurythmy could have gone the way of other dance movements from the early years of the twentieth century, whose initiators did not establish a ‘tradition’ on which future generations of dancers could build, and so their impulse remained stunted at a certain level or passed away with the originators.

The Speech Course had a quality unlike Steiner’s other lectures, which the transcription of the words cannot really convey. Imagine for a moment the bustle and excitement of these sessions, Steiner at the lectern with a blackboard behind him for illustrations, eurythmists and students in the audience with notebooks and pencils poised, and the eurythmists on stage ready to demonstrate whatever he asked for. Ralph Kux draws attention to the special animation that characterized Steiner’s demeanour during these lectures:

Especially fresh in my memory is the extraordinary vitality which he displayed . . . When, for instance, he was arranging the zodiac in movement forms, he himself would lightly leap up onto the stage and show each eurythmist the characteristic movement she needed to make for each constellation. Fervent enthusiasm lay in his eyes and gestures at such moments, as he moved amongst the performers with youthful vigour. One had the sense of a great educator who wished to kindle verve and energy in his students.6

Blackboard drawings and demonstrations enlivened the whole experience, so, as well as the words which the stenographer noted as he spoke, the spectators had visual experiences which can only be faintly reconstructed.

As Marie Steiner describes it:

. . . the whole bore the character of fresh and immediate improvisation; drawings were rapidly sketched on the board, exercises were performed by the young ladies to illustrate aspects of the work; everything was conversation and collaboration rather than lecturing.7

How can we possibly capture the mood of spontaneity and interchange that must have passed between Rudolf Steiner and the others simply from stenographers’ notes? This present edition includes a quantity of material to stimulate our imaginations, like the colour plates of his illustrations and the blackboard drawings in the appendix, as well as verbal accounts from participants, which give us the best chance of reproducing the event imaginatively.

The new German edition of Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible was justified on the grounds that it contains the results of in-depth research that resulted in many changes to the earlier editions. Stefan Hasler and Martina Maria Sam, the editors of the German text, researched every aspect of the original transcripts of the course. For example, the stenographic notes have been re-examined and corrections made. They rummaged the archived notes of the participants for unincorporated material and filled in omissions by earlier editors.

Today, eurythmists must, of necessity, be ‘researchers’, in the best sense of the word, because the eurythmists from Steiner’s time are no longer with us to pass on their first-hand experiences, as was the case earlier. Moreover, though previous generations may have been content with wisdom passed down from generations of teachers, today’s student can rightfully feel a sense of liberation from this mode of learning and wish to engage directly with original sources in a new spirit of enquiry. To this end, this modern edition offers extensive invaluable ‘data’. Moreover, we also discover that our teachers could be fallible or that the sources were not always in agreement. For example, primitive drawings made by audience members show that in some cases, the spectators ‘saw’ different things, although they were seeing the same thing at the same moment! In previous versions of this course, such contradictory information did not appear. Though initially one might feel somewhat destabilized, wondering which is the ‘correct’ version, one is also invited to discover for oneself. Ultimately, this attitude may more closely reflect Steiner’s own – if we view his indications as stimulants to our creativity rather than ‘rules’ for how to do eurythmy.

Ultimately, we can be deeply grateful to the effort and dedication to eurythmy of Hasler and Sam, who had the foresight to grip the moment, investigate all the extant sources, and create the most accurate version possible, thus aiding Steiner in his intention to lay down a tradition for future eurythmists.

Steiner states this intention to create an authoritative body of basic principles at the beginning of the course. But the essence of this course lies not only in the content that he brought. You soon perceive that what he said works upon you even in the transcribed text. Something over and above the content is conveyed in how he brings it. On the one hand, we observe what Ralph Kux refers to as the ‘great educator’ who has a knack for activating engagement in his students. On the other, we find a more subtle quality that arouses a feeling for aspects of the art that is the thing, at the same time as it describes it. In a report in the Newsletter for the members of the Anthroposophical Society a few weeks after the Speech Course, Steiner’s focus had changed from the pragmatic reasons for giving the course to the inner intention that pervades it.

The eurythmist must be able to place the immediate reality and Being of Art before people, and this requires an especially inward and intimate relationship to art. It was an understanding of this that the course sought to give participants. It sought to show how feeling is kindled in the soul as it witnesses gestures and how this feeling leads to an experience of the word made visible.8

Here we catch a glimpse of what is weaving in Steiner’s deeper intentions for this course. As he says here, his impulse is to awaken artistic feeling (Kunstsinn) in the gesture, so the artist can ‘place the immediate reality and being of Art before people’. For Steiner, in our ‘prosaic’ age – when we tend to the abstract, to distancing ourselves from experience – everything depends on ‘kindling feeling [or ‘sensing’] in the soul’ so that we participate in what we do. From this delicate source, our true humanity flows. The eurythmist must cultivate the intensity of artistic experience through ‘an especially inward and intimate relationship to art’ that has the power to reach across and move the audience. Through training the feeling or sensing, the eurythmist can make the surrounding air tangible and the soul-spiritual word visible.

Instilling a feeling for the artistic in each eurythmist may be Steiner’s main intention but it is also the most elusive: how does Steiner kindle feeling in the soul so that those witnessing the gestures perceive the soul element directly in the technique? This weaving of the soul into the teaching technique appears in an impressive variety of ways: by modelling it and inciting it, through imaginations, anecdotes, and characterization, through juxtaposition and contrast, playfulness and deep seriousness, and through shaping each chapter artistically so participants not only learn about an element but experience it in a lively, immediate way. Of course, it was even more present for those witnessing Rudolf Steiner’s voice and vitality; in the way he interacted with the eurythmists and audience; in the mood changes, the very atmosphere; in the invisible that was made visible.

The English translation of this work does eminent justice to the original. Matthew Barton, poet and wordsmith, beautifully balances the potentially conflicting criteria of accuracy to the original with faithfulness to English idiom, to re-create the text in language that is as clear a medium through which to perceive the living voice of Rudolf Steiner as I believe it is possible to have. He has overcome the difficulties of earlier translations and polished the prose until it is consistently clear and at the same time fresh and natural as English.

Translation always offers challenges, especially when the subject is language itself and when, as in this text, Steiner was addressing an audience whose main language was German. As a result, many examples that he uses, particularly for the sounds of speech, are from the point-of-view of German experience, which can be foreign to English speakers. To offset this aspect, Steiner usually gives more than one picture; for example, one may be humorous or folkloric in nature and out of Middle European experience, and the other a cosmic picture. Whereas the local, homespun examples may mean little or nothing to non-German speakers, more archetypal imagery may be more accessible to them.

Giving more than one example like this is one indication that Steiner is not speaking only to the audience sitting in the auditorium. Awakening the artistic sensibility also means awakening an international, unprejudiced view regarding language. One theme in the first lecture is the primeval Word, the origin of all languages, and the etheric human being as the Word which contains within it the entire alphabet.9 That is to say, the sounds of speech are archetypal and appear in all languages, as do his further indications for grammar, rhythm, and so on.

On the fourth day of the course, Steiner addresses particularly the international nature of eurythmy when he speaks of the language ‘genius’. That is, each language is characterized by different qualities which modify the original sounds and grammatical elements of the one language from which all emerged. So, for example, German has an overall sculptural quality. English, on the other hand, relates to the waves of the sea. The Hungarian language is ‘a hunter’, and Russian simply suggests the inner nature of the word. Through eurythmy, spoken language can be metamorphosed into ‘visible speech’ in every language of the world, because eurythmy is the expression of ‘the divine, the universal Word’.

To that end, the translation of this invaluable eurythmy text into English is significant also because English is the lingua franca of the modern world. Considering how eurythmy in our time has expanded far beyond European centres to Africa, the Far East and the Americas, the potential value of these lectures in English to students and trainers has spread far beyond the English-speaking nations. It is to be hoped that the publication of this English translation of the speech course, as we celebrate its centenary, will also be an inspiration to the international community of eurythmy students, eurythmists, and anyone with an interest in understanding Steiner’s intentions for eurythmy to renew their connection to the immense potential of this art for healing, educating, and uplifting through artistic expression.

Coralee Frederickson,Sussex, Easter 2024

1 Steiner, R. (2024), Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible, Translated by M. Barton. Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, Marie Steiner, Foreword to 1927 edition, p. 373.

2 Siegloch, M. (1997), How the New Art of Eurythmy Began: Lory Maier-Smits, the First Eurythmist, London: Temple Lodge Publishing.

3 Kisseleff, T. (2021), Eurythmy and Rudolf Steiner, Edinburgh: Floris Books.

4 Steiner, R. (2024), Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible, op. cit., Lecture 1, p. 1.

5 Dubach-Donath, A., op. cit., p. 344.

6 Kux, R., op. cit., p. 344-5.

7 Steiner, M., op. cit., p. 371.

8 Steiner, R., What is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society, 20 July 1924 (No. 8/1924, p. 341-2).

9 Steiner, R. (2024), Eurythmy as Speech Made Visible, op. cit., Lecture 1, p. 4.

LECTURE ONE

DORNACH, 24 JUNE 1924

MY dear friends

The initial stimulus for the lectures I am going to give here—a review and discussion of eurythmy—has arisen from Mrs Steiner’s view that what we might call a careful shaping and structuring of eurythmy tradition first requires us to reiterate and gather together everything relating to speech eurythmy, everything which has been given to people involved in this field over the years.1 At the same time, these reiterations will also be supplemented by various additions to the theme which invariably follow from and enlarge on specific details themselves, rather than being presented in isolation.

Here I will try to consider eurythmy in its diverse aspects, the artistic aspect of course, which is our prime consideration, but also pedagogy and therapy.2

Today I want to offer a kind of introduction which will be followed, tomorrow, by discussion of the primary elements of speech eurythmy. For eurythmists in all fields, the thing of prime importance is to live as individuals and whole human beings in the art and practice of eurythmy in such a way that it becomes living expression. This cannot be done unless we penetrate the spirit of eurythmy as speech made visible.3 If we merely watch eurythmy, and regard it as something to be enjoyed aesthetically, we need know nothing about its intrinsic nature—which is also of course true of aesthetic enjoyment of any kind, in the same way that we do not have to learn the laws of harmony or counterpoint and suchlike in order to enjoy listening to music. It is simply an intrinsic and natural human endowment that aesthetic appreciation, aesthetic understanding as we may call it, is inherent in our sound and healthy development.

Art must exert an intrinsic, aesthetic effect upon us, must appear self-evident and natural. But someone who practises eurythmy and who is called on to place it into the world in one way or another, will need to delve into its very essence in the same way that, say, a musician or sculptor has to penetrate their art. But in the case of eurythmy this means at the same time penetrating human nature. You see, there is no other art that employs something inherent in human nature in such an eminent sense as eurythmy. The means and tools and instruments required by the [other] arts are not ones so closely involved with our being as those of eurythmy.

Certainly, the arts of mime and dance4 involve and employ our human instrument as artistic medium and in doing so come close to what is intrinsically human. But in the art of mime and physical expression the skills developed are, fundamentally, only secondary and subordinate to the overall effect or portrayal, and are not subsumed in the artistic self-configuration of the artists themselves; rather, they make use of the human figure in each instance to mimic pre-existing matters of earthly life.

Besides this, in the performing arts something we employ in ordinary life is merely made clearer, speech itself is merely rendered with more clarity. To make speech more expressive, the performer adds gesture to it. And so, as I say, what we have there is at most a minor enlargement of the human nature already present on the physical plane.

In the case of dance—as long as we can speak of the art of dance, wherever it raises itself to an artistic level—we have an outflow of emotion, of will, in human movement, and so again a human predisposition already present on the physical plane as movement potential is simply further elaborated.

In eurythmy, on the other hand, we have something that does not in any way pertain to human beings in ordinary, physical life but must be entirely and creatively drawn forth from the spirit; we have something that makes use of the human being alone, of the human form in which we stand here in the physical world; makes use only of the human being as an expressive means, of human movement as an expressive means.

But what, you may ask, is actually shown or presented? Now you will only understand what is presented in eurythmy if you consider that it seeks to be speech made visible. If we configure speech and language in [theatrical] performance, our model for this is ordinary speech, which we imitate; but if we shape and configure speech itself there is no model on which this is based. Rather it arises and proceeds distinctly and independently from us, from our human nature. What manifests in speech, what appears in speech, is not present anywhere as such in the natural world.

Thus eurythmy must certainly be a primary, original creation. Speech—let us start with it—is produced by the human larynx and by what is more or less connected with it. What is this larynx really? The question has to be asked for I have often suggested that in eurythmy the whole human being becomes a kind of larynx.5 And so let us ask ourselves this: What meaning does the larynx have altogether? You see, if we consider speech only, initially, as something produced by the larynx, we will not be attentive to what actually emerges from it, what takes shape there. But we may perhaps recall a remarkable tradition little understood today, one you can find hinted at in the beginning of the Gospel of John: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a God.’6

What people understand by the ‘Word’ nowadays is something which has no meaning whatsoever in the context of the prelude to the John Gospel. This prelude to the John Gospel is continually uttered and people believe that they can form a sense of what it means. But they can’t, for really, if we consider what people today can picture by the concept ‘word’—which they regard at the same time as ‘the name [that] is noise and smoke, befogging heaven’s blaze’7 and so on, considering it in a sense to be the poor cousin of thought and regarding themselves as lofty for holding such a view—if we recognize what people today can understand by the word ‘word’, then the prelude to the John Gospel makes no sense at all, not the least sense. Which word is meant, they wonder; we have so many. It must be surely a particular, tangible word. What then is the nature and essence of this Word? This has to be asked.

Underlying this tradition, hinted at in the prelude to the John Gospel, is the fact that people once knew instinctively what the Word is. Nowadays they no longer do. You see, the term ‘Word’, as people originally beheld it, once encompassed the whole human being as etheric creation.

Since you are anthroposophists you all know what the etheric human being is. We have the physical human being, and then the etheric human being. As described by ordinary physiology and anatomy, the physical human being possesses certain outward and inner forms that are drawn and depicted—although people do not of course consider that such drawings represent only the very least part of the physical human being as such since the physical organism is at the same time fluid, gaseous, warmth-bearing, and these aspects are of course not drawn in human physiology or anatomy. Nevertheless, we can have here an initial idea of the nature of the physical human body.

But then we also have the second aspect of human nature: the human etheric body. If we were to draw this human etheric body it would appear hugely complex, for basically you can as little depict it as something static as you can depict lightning.8 Lightning is in constant motion and flux and so to portray it you would have to depict flux and movement. The etheric body can only be depicted in the same way as trying to paint lightning—if one sought to do this—for it is in continual flux and living, responsive motion.

Now these motions, these forms in continual movement which do not constitute the human etheric body but which continually arise and fade—are they to be found anywhere in the human world in a form we can approach? Yes, we possess them. And an original, intuitive knowledge was aware of this. We possess them in what the human being altogether—please, dear friends, I speak very precisely and things must be taken precisely as I speak them—in everything we form as the sounds flowing into the content of speech.

Now survey in your minds everything that you form through your larynx as sounds arising in the whole scope of human speech, thus everything that in any way forms part of what belongs to speech as it emerges from and is served by the larynx. Try to become aware that all these elements emerging from the larynx, which constitute everything emerging when we speak, consist of particular movements, and that these movements depend upon the underlying predisposition of the forms of the larynx itself and of its neighbouring organs, from which speech proceeds.

Now of course all these potential sounds do not emerge together. We do not utter at one and the same time everything underlying speech. When would this be the case? When would we utter everything underlying speech? However paradoxical this sounds, it is true to say that we would utter [everything underlying speech] if we sounded forth every possible speech sound from a, b, c to z, one after another. Imagine this for a moment. Imagine someone starting with a, b and so on in succession—not stopping of course except to draw breath where needed—through to [w,] z, sounding forth every speech sound one after the other.

Board drawing 1

Everything uttered inscribes a particular form in the air, one we do not perceive but which we must assume to exist, which we could even imagine might be recorded by scientific means without needing to be drawn.

Whenever we say a word, ‘tree’, ‘sun’, we execute a very particular form in the air. If we were to utter all the sounds from a to z, we would create a very complex form in the air, a very complex air form. What would arise if someone actually did this? It would have to be done within a limited time—and in our lectures we will hear why this is so. It would have to happen within a certain, limited time so that, having arrived at z, the first sound would not yet have vanished completely; the form of the first sound would still be present as form pattern—the a when we get to z. If we succeeded in doing this, passing rapidly from a to z in a succession of uttered sounds, the a remaining present until we reached z and the whole inscribing itself in the air, what kind of form would we behold?

Well, this would be the form of the human etheric body. In this way, the human etheric body would arise. The human etheric body would stand before you if you were to sound out the whole alphabet—though it would have to be corrected first since, as it exists today, and is normally recited, it is not quite correct,9 but now I am concerned with the underlying principle. If you were to sound and configure before you the alphabet from a to z, then the human being would stand before you.

So what has actually happened here? The human being as etheric body is always present of course. What are you doing therefore as you speak, as you utter the alphabet? In a sense you are immersing yourself in the forms of your etheric body and imparting them to the air. In the air you form an image of your etheric body.10 What happens when we speak a single word (which naturally does not have the whole range of sounds in it)? Let us imagine someone is standing before us, standing there as physical body, etheric body, astral body, I. He speaks some word or other. You will see that he immerses his consciousness in his etheric body. He reproduces a part of this etheric body in the air—as if you were to place yourself before the physical body and, if you like, depict a hand so that it could be seen in the air.

Board drawing 1

Now the etheric body does not possess these forms which the physical body has, but the forms of the etheric body are reproduced in the air. If we rightly understand this, my dear friends, we here behold the most wonderful metamorphosis of the human form and its development. For what is this etheric body actually? It is what contains all the forces of growth, the forces involved in accomplishing nutrition and also the forces involved in bringing about memory.11 All this we impart to the configuration of the air when we speak.

When we speak, we imprint our inward nature on the air in so far as this interiority manifests in the etheric body. When we put sounds together, words arise. If we put [all the sounds] together from the beginning of the alphabet to the end, a very complex word is created, but this word contains all possible words, and at the same time it contains our human etheric being. But before a physical person existed on the earth, the etheric person existed, for the etheric human being underlies the physical one. But what is the etheric human being? The etheric human being is the word that encompasses the whole alphabet.

And so, in speaking of the shaping and configuring of this primordial Word that existed in the beginning, this original Word, in speaking of the configuring of the primordial Word and paying heed to it, we can call what arises when we speak a birth: when the alphabet sounds forth we can call it a birth of the whole etheric human being. Otherwise it is the birth of fragments, of parts of the human being in separate words—but always there is something of the human being that sounds forth in a single word.

What does it mean if we say the word ‘tree’? When we say the word ‘tree’ this means that we are characterizing the tree by saying that what stands there before and outside us, tree, is a part of us, of our etheric being. Whenever we speak we are describing how every separate thing in the world is a part of us. Each thing in the world is a part of us. There is nothing that cannot be expressed through us. Just as we express the human being—and with us the whole world—by uttering all the sounds of the alphabet, so in separate words we utter fragments of the whole Word, of the alphabet, we utter something that is a part of the world. The whole universe would be uttered with [the whole sequence] a, b, c and so forth, and parts of the universe are uttered with single, separate words.

But here, to think this through, we must be clear what inherently underlies the sounds of speech. Underlying the sounds of speech, initially, is all our human interiority. And then what manifests through the etheric body is everything in human inwardness that can be experienced as feelings in the soul. And now we must therefore investigate what it is that can be experienced as feelings in the human soul.

Let us start with a [ah]*. As a young child we learn to say this sound in an unconscious, dreamy state. Later this is buried when we are maltreated in school with the subsequent teaching of phonemes, of phonics. When we learn to speak as a child there is already present something of the great mystery of speech, albeit as yet in a dreamy, subconscious state.

When we say ah we must, if our feelings are somewhat healthy, feel this ah as emerging from within us whenever we are in some kind of condition of wonder or astonishment.

Wonder, astonishment, yes, this is present, this wonder, and is in turn only one part of us. We are after all not something abstract. We are something or other at every moment. In every waking moment we are something or other. We can of course doze through it and then are nothing precisely; but we are still something even when we doze. At every moment we are really something or other. One minute we are one who is amazed, the next minute one who is frightened, and a moment later, let us say, one who is flailing about. At every moment, every second we are something or other. We are not just an abstract human being but something or other specific every second. And thus we are also at times the one who wonders, the one who is astonished. And this comes to expression when we sculpt into the air what occurs in the etheric body in a state of amazement, with the help of the larynx: ah. In doing so we are uttering, placing outside ourselves, a part of our human nature, that is, the person in amazement. We are placing him into the air.

You see, when a physical person comes about on the earth, it must be as a whole human being if this person is to emerge in accordance with universal evolutionary potential. This whole human being emerges from the organ of the mother’s organism which we call the uterus: a physical person with a physical form emerges here. If we spoke the alphabet from a to z what would arise there would be an etheric human being, elaborated in the air, coming forth from and configured by the human larynx and its neighbouring organs. In the same way, when a child emerges into the world, when a child, as we can say, sees the light of the world, then the physical human being arises, proceeds, from the uterus and its neighbouring organs.

Now the larynx does not act in the same way as this other mothering organ, but, in its continual creative activity it gives rise in words to fragments of what is human. If we were to encompass all the words of speech within the creating larynx—which is not even the case in poets as rich in vocabulary as Shakespeare,12 though almost so—we would form the whole etheric human being in a figure of air, but in a sequence, in development, a birth that is continually accomplished during speech. Speaking is always part of this birth, this birth of the etheric human being.

And in turn the physical larynx is only the outer shell of that most wonderful of organs present in the etheric body, which is in a sense the womb of the word. And here we have before us that wondrous metamorphosis I referred to when speaking of metamorphosis. Everything in us is the metamorphosis of certain basic forms. The etheric larynx and its shell, the physical larynx, is a metamorphosis of the mother’s uterus. And when we speak we are involved in human creation, etheric human creation.

Connected with this secret of speech, and pointing to it, is the fact apparent if we consider matters pertaining to both genders, in the link between speech and sexual functions, for instance in the male gender in the change of voice [the voice breaking in adolescence].13

Thus we are concerned here with a creative activity which in speech rises from the deepest source of cosmic nature. Here we see manifestly unfolding before us in flux something that otherwise withdraws into the secret depths of the human organism when a physical human being is developing in the womb. And this gives us what we need for the practice of a creative art—we gain respect, esteem for the creative activity in which we are immersed as an artist. In the artistic realm we can get nowhere with a merely theoretical consideration, which renders us abstract. In the field of art we need something that places our whole human nature into the reality of the cosmos. And how could we place our whole being into the cosmos better than by becoming aware how the development of the human embryo is connected with speech? Whenever a person speaks, they configure outside them something that in primordial times was once human creation in which the human being as such was formed out of cosmic depths, out of the etheric, as a configuration of air, before becoming a fluid form, or later a solid form.14 Whenever we speak we place ourselves back into the cosmic emergence and development of the human being as this occurred in primordial times.

Let us take just one example. Let us return to this ah which allows the person in amazement to arise before us. We should recognize that wherever ah appears in speech, there is some kind of wonder or amazement underlying it. Take the word ‘vast’ or the word ‘barn’*—it doesn’t matter which, just a word that has ah in it.

Board drawing 1.wasser (water) pfahl (post)

Where you get to the sound ah in a word, there is some kind of wonder or astonishment underlying it, where the person amazed is expressed in language. This was something people once knew. Those versed in Hebrew knew it. What was present in Hebrew? The ah, the Aleph. What was this? It was the person astonished.15

Now I’d like to remind you of something which you could add to what is really intended and intimated with this ah. In ancient Greece it was said that philosophy begins with wonder, with astonishment.16 Philosophy, love of wisdom, love of knowledge, begins with astonishment, with wonder. If things had been expressed in a fully organic way, in accord with primordial knowledge, with ancient, instinctive clairvoyance, people could also have said that philosophy begins with ah—this would have signified exactly the same thing for a person in primordial times: philosophy, the love of wisdom, begins with ah.

But what are we really doing when we pursue philosophy? Ultimately we are fathoming the human being. All philosophy strives for self-knowledge. Ultimately the aim is to discern the nature of the human being. Thus knowledge of the human being, beholding of the nature of the human being, begins with ah. But at the same time this knowledge is most hidden and great efforts are required, a great deal must be done, to acquire this knowledge of the human being. Only when we approach the human being as one formed entirely out of spirit-soul-corporeal nature, only when we discern the human being’s whole wealth and fullness, do we really stand before this being in the greatest wonder, as something before which we can say ah. And therefore the human being in wonder, in amazement at himself, at his true being, is really the human being who has unfolded and emerged to the highest and most ideal degree: ah.

If we have gained the sense that the physical human being is only a part of the whole human being and that we really only have the whole human being before us when we behold the wealth of what is divine in him, this is something that an original humanity saw as the human being in wonder before himself, as ah. The ah is the human being, the human being in his highest perfection. Thus ah would be the expression of a feeling experience of wonder in the human being.

Board drawing 1.ah: human being

Now let us pass on from ah to b, so as to give indications at least that can help us understand this archetypal word formed [of all the sounds] from a to z. Let us consider b. The b is what is called a consonant whereas a [ah] is a vowel. When you utter a vowel you can sense that first and foremost you are expressing your deepest interiority. With every vowel, as with ah, you have a feeling experience. Wherever ah arises, wonder or astonishment is present. Wherever an e [eh] appears, we have what I would describe as, ‘This did something to me which I feel.’ Wherever an eh figures and we dwell with this, it signifies roughly, ‘This has done something to me which I feel and sense.’

Just think how abstract we have become, abstract, terribly shrivelled people—like a shrivelled plum or apple—in our relationship to speech and language. Just think of how we chatter away but have no inkling that when we come to an ah and move on from it to an eh, as we do continually, that we are passing from wonder to, ‘This has done something to me, I feel it, it has affected or impinged on me.’

Board drawing 1.eh: it has done something to me

Let us now also get a sense, a feeling, for the nature of i [ee], this sense of having been inquisitive and then having discovered something. Feel the quality of the vowel; everywhere a wonderful, very complex underlying experience is present. Here we gain the impression of a fresh, natural, original person when we simply allow the five vowels to act upon and affect each other. We give birth to our full dignity again, really, when we allow these five vowels to emerge in full awareness, that is, to come forth from within us in full awareness. That is why I say that we are so shrivelled, and we perceive only the [intellectual] meaning of sounds and nothing any more of the experience of what they really signify, really mean. Words are just ‘signifiers’ for us and so on. We have become very shrivelled up.

Now when we come to the consonants it is different. We cannot sense that we [draw] them forth feelingly from within us but now instead we are replicating what is outside us.

Let us say that I am astonished—ah; this is not something I can replicate or mirror but can only utter it from within. But if I want to express something that is round—this table here—what do I do if I do not wish to speak? I replicate its shape, I imitate its form [gesture to demonstrate]. If I wish to mime a nose without speaking the word, but wish to make myself understood [without words], I can present it like this [gesture to demonstrate]. It is the same thing when I form consonants. They are replicas of something external to me. They always replicate something outward, except that in speech we express these shapes in a configuration of air proceeding from organs surrounding the larynx, the palate and so on. With the help of these organs we configure a form that recreates, reproduces, imitates what is outside us. This speech goes so far as to be fixed in letters, and that too is something we will speak of later on.

So when we utter b—and because it has a form, a shape, we cannot sound it alone, we have to add the e to it—it is always the imitation of something. And if we were able to hold in stasis what is formed in the air in the b, and is present within it as we utter this sound, it always has an enveloping quality. An enveloping, encompassing form emerges. What emerges is something we can call a hut, a house. The b always reproduces a hut, a house, a shelter. So when we start with the sequence ah, b, then what we have is this: ‘The human being in his perfection’ [ah] and ‘The human being in his house’, b.

In this way we could take every sound in the alphabet and, in the sequence of speech sounds, we would have uttered the mystery of the human being—what the human being is in the cosmos, the human being in his house, in his corporeal sheath. If we passed on to c, d and so forth, each of them would express something about the human being. And once we arrived at z, we would have before us, really, a wisdom concerning the human being, for the etheric body is this wisdom.

You can see therefore that something extraordinarily significant happens in speech. The human being shapes and creates himself. And we can for instance configure a certain completeness of soul if we now attend to the following feelings:

Board drawing 1. ee oh ah

i [ee]—o [oh]—a [ah]—this embodies a great deal of soul nature, almost the whole of it in terms of our life of feeling.17

And now you see we can say this: let us take a look at what emerges from us as speech. Let us assume someone before us utters this a, b, c so that the whole human etheric body is present there, arises, emerges from the larynx, from the uterus. There it is.

The physical human being emerges within the earthly realm from a mother’s organism, from a metamorphosis of the larynx, emerges from the actual uterus. But now let us picture this whole human being who is placed into the world with everything pertaining to him, for what emerges in this way from the mother’s organism cannot remain as it is. If it remained as it was throughout life it would never become a whole human being; first everything must be added to it. The whole person at, let us say, the age of 35, has now acquired more from the whole nature of the cosmos than the infant possesses. This whole human being, if we picture him schematically now, then—in the same way as speech emerges from the larynx, and the physical human being emerges as infant from the womb [board drawing 2, white]—

Board drawing 2

we must picture the whole human being at roughly the age of 35 as emerging from the whole cosmos (red);

Board drawing 2

we must conceive of the human being having been uttered forth from the cosmos in the same way that words are uttered by us, and then we have the human being in his form, in his whole shape and configuration as a spoken word.