The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words to introduce this eurythmy performance, as I usually do. Not to explain the matter, may I be allowed to speak to you about these words; rather, because what we are doing here is based on an artistic form that is still unfamiliar and also comes from artistic sources that are still unfamiliar. What you will see on the stage are movements of the individual human being through his limbs, and also movements of groups of people, spatial forms and the like. At first glance, all this could be seen as a kind of gestural art, as a kind of mimic or pantomime art, and could be confused with all kinds of neighboring arts, movement-like arts and the like. However, this is not what is meant here at all. What can be seen here as eurythmy would be misunderstood if lumped together with pantomime or gesticulation. This is a presentation of a visible language that is performed by the whole human being, as audible speech is otherwise performed by the larynx and other speech organs, that is, by a very specific, localized part of the human organism.

Just as everything else that comes from this place is called Goetheanism by us, so too can we, in a sense, describe this eurythmic art as a part of Goetheanism. I can best describe the underlying principles by saying a few words about them. It may sound somewhat abstract, but that is not what I mean at all. What Goethe meant in theory in his theory of metamorphosis is meant entirely artistically. This theory of metamorphosis will one day play a much greater role than it has already played, when it is realized that the organism, the human being, can actually be wonderfully explained by the theory of metamorphosis, be it in plants, animals or humans.

This theory of metamorphosis can be initially illustrated using the object with which Goethe himself first presented it: the plant. For Goethe sees in the individual plant leaf only a simpler version of the whole plant. So each individual leaf is the idea of a whole plant, and the whole plant in turn is only a more complicated leaf. But in this way, everything alive can be understood in the Goethean sense. A single organ or a group of organs always represents the whole in a certain way – according to its disposition. And the whole is basically only – only more complicatedly formed – some organ or a group of organs.

What Goethe applies to form can also be applied to the activity of the organism and then elevated to the artistic. So we can say: What a person develops as a certain inner tendency of movement when he speaks – in every sound, in every turn of phrase, in everything that becomes audible through speech – is based on an inner tendency of movement. This is precisely why the whole human being reveals himself in language.

What takes place in a particular group of organs when a person communicates through speech or, in particular, when he or she expresses it artistically in poetry or song, what is communicated through a single group of organs, can be seen just as as the individual leaf is taken by Goethe as the whole plant, so that which is revealed in a single organ group, once one has learned to observe it through sensory and supersensory vision and has applied this observation over the course of years, can be extended to the whole human being: And so a visible language comes into being that can be used, on the one hand, as a different form of expression for that which also resounds in music. In music, we have, on the one hand, what is to be revealed out of the nature of the soul in the beginning; in poetry, we have the other side. And since we are dealing here with movements in a visible language, in which the whole human being or groups of people become visible larynxes on the stage, what wants to reveal itself musically on the one hand and poetically in recitation or declamation on the other can be revealed through this eurythmic art. It is not about mimicry or pantomime.

One can see that this is still unusual today, because I am repeatedly confronted with an accusation that is often raised at eurythmy performances: that the movements might be quite nice, but that our eurythmy artists are missing something, namely a certain expression on their faces. People then miss that.

But in doing so, they show that they have not yet grasped what eurythmy is about. If the artists were to convey what can be expressed in facial expressions, pantomime, in the physiognomy, then this would appear as an appendage to the eurythmic art, in the same way as grimaces can appear when speaking. That is what is usually not understood: that it is a visible language. Once you grasp that, you also know that if what is expressed in the face, head and so on is to be developed, then it will also be used, but it must lie within the meaning of the eurythmic line of movement itself. In this sense, eurythmy is something, let us say, like the musical art itself, where it is not the individual note that matters, the individual movement, but the lawful sequence of movements in the melody and so on. That is what our eurythmy is based on. Everything is a real language. And just as a momentary gesture cannot be anything other than an aid to speech – for instance, for the speech of sounds, when particular passions or particular emotions are to be expressed through this speech of sounds – in this sense, something of ordinary gestures or ordinary facial expressions cannot accompany that which is eurythmy. But the eurythmic element is present in every single movement, even in the smallest, and is something that is based on sensual and supersensory observation and that is extracted from the whole human organization as an independent element, just as the physiognomy of the larynx and the other speech organs is otherwise brought about from the whole of the human being in the production of speech sounds.

Therefore, what asserts itself as a eurythmic movement cannot be compared to any other naturalistic movement. Above all, it would be a dilettantish misunderstanding of eurythmy to believe that what comes about through distortions or through the facial expressions that are already formed, that this is somehow something like language; but something cannot be there because it does not belong to the thing.

On the one hand, you will see how that which is to be revealed spiritually in song and music is expressed through the visible, musical-linguistic expressive movement that lies in eurythmy. And on the other hand, you will hear poems recited in an artistic way, through recitation and declamation, which on the other hand will be performed in front of you in the movements of individuals or whole groups of people. This shows how the art of declamation and recitation is not really understood in its true artistic element today. Today, people think that recitation should be done in such a way that the prose content of the poetry is expressed. Somehow – with particular intensity, as one might think – this or that element of the prose content is emphasized, while something else is dropped or the like.

In this way, one would never be able to accompany eurythmy declamatory or recitative, but because in eurythmy the main thing is inner movement, what forms are, what is truly artistic, must also be emphasized in the poems that are recited to the accompaniment of eurythmy. Great poets like Goethe have always placed the greatest value on this form and design of language. It must be emphasized again and again how Goethe himself rehearsed “Iphigenia” - that is, iambs - with a baton in order to place the main emphasis on the melodious flow of speech, on rhythm and on the beat, and not on the prose content. And with Schiller it was always the case that before he developed any kind of poetry, he had a kind of melodious element in his soul. And this musical, melodious element dominated him; at first it was completely wordless, the words only came later.

So what is musical or plastic in language, which is not the prose content, is what comes to the fore through eurythmy. This is why, when eurythmy is accompanied by declamation and recitation, it must also come into its own in this art. And so the unartistic element, which is even admired in much of our declaiming and reciting today because our time is somewhat unartistic, will in turn lead us back to an artistic element. I just wanted to mention this in relation to the artistic element of our eurythmy.

Today, however, you will also see performances by children, in addition to the artistic eurythmy performances. And I would like to point out another element here. There is also a third element, the therapeutic and hygienic element. It does not belong here to discuss that, but the second. I would like to point out: In the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt and directed by me, we have something like an animated gymnastics, [we have] introduced eurythmy as a compulsory teaching subject into the classroom. And we can truly say – the lessons have been going on for a little longer than a year now – that it is really as one might expect: this subject is perceived by the children as something that they feel and experience quite emotionally as emerging from human nature. So that the children feel: the body wants to move in the way that is performed in eurythmy.

You don't have to go as far as – as I have repeatedly stated – a very famous contemporary physiologist, who was present here recently. And when I spoke to him about it, he told me from his physiological point of view that gymnastics is not an appropriate subject for teaching at all, but is something barbaric. As I said, I do not want to go that far, it is not necessary, but I do want to admit, contrary to this physiologist: gymnastics is of great value for physical education, and we certainly do not want to ban it from the classroom. But we place at its side a spiritualized gymnastics that truly not only trains the body but also trains the will and soul. It will be seen that the next generation will already have a great need for what eurythmy can give - this applies less to adults, but more to children. It must be emphasized that in the civilised languages, where much has become conventional, this conventionality, which often leads to phrase-mongering and then to lies, takes hold of the soul so easily. If we introduce eurythmy into the school, it is a language that comes from the whole human being. In this language, the child cannot learn to lie. That is why it is so extremely important that eurythmy is also used as a form of soul training in schools, alongside the usual physical education. As a teaching subject, it is then also a school of truthfulness, of breaking the habit of using empty phrases, of merely outward convention and the like.

Dear audience, although these intentions are all connected with eurythmy, I have to emphasize again and again before each performance that we have to ask for a great deal of forbearance, and that is because it is all only just beginning. We are our own harshest critics, and those who have been here often, especially months ago, will have noticed that we have recently put a lot of effort into the musical aspects, especially in the design of the forms on which the poems are based, and that progress can certainly be seen. But we are just at the beginning. If, on the one hand, we are to some extent our own harshest critics, we know from the sources, from the formal language of this art, about its developmental possibilities. And we know that when this eurythmy is fully developed - perhaps we will be able to develop it further, but in any case it has potential for development that requires a long period of training - and when it is developed, perhaps by others, it will in any case, according to its potential, one day be a fully fledged art alongside its older sister arts.

Program of the performance in Dornach, February 6, 1921

From the “Chymischen Hochzeit” by Valentin Andreae with music by Max Schuurman
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (44.) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (45.) by Rudolf Steiner
Saying from the soul calendar (46.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little bird“ by Edward Grieg
“Question - Answer” with a musical prelude by Max Schuurman
“Where does evil come from?“ from: The test of the soul by R. Steiner
“Elf music I” by Jan Stuten
“Elfe“ Joseph von Eichendorff
“Elfenmusik II”
“Abendgefühle“ by Friedrich Hebbel
“Elfenmusik III”
“Mein Kind“ by Heinrich Heine
“Urtrieb VII” by Fercher von Steinwand
“Urtrieb VIII” by Fercher von Steinwand
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “The Corf Clock”; “Palmström's Clock”; “The Water Donkey”; “The Mouse Trap” Address on Eurythmy, Dornach, February 6, 1921

Dear attendees!

Allow me to say a few words about our eurythmy performance. Artistic work must speak for itself, and it is not explained. The performance will speak for itself. But here in our eurythmy we are dealing with the attempt to achieve something from unusual artistic sources and with unusual art forms. And therefore a few words may be said about these art sources and this particular artistic language of forms.

You will see the moving human being as a human being, the movements of the individual limbs of the individual human being; you will see forms being performed by individuals and groups of people in space. All this is to be understood as a language that is to function in movement as a visible language. This visible language is constructed according to exactly the same principle as the spoken language.

Perhaps I may draw attention to Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, which even today has not been sufficiently appreciated in terms of the insights it can provide for man for an understanding of nature and life. For everything that emanates from the Goetheanum is, after all, based on what Goethe had already presented in The Elements, in both his view of nature and his view of art. Now, Goethe is of the opinion that every single organ or group of organs in a living being can be understood by looking at it as a more primitively formed individual, but still representing the whole in the idea: a single plant leaf is, in idea, a whole plant, only more primitively, simply formed. The whole plant is in turn only a precious [more complicated?] simpler leaf. Goethe tried to explain this on the basis of the forms of the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and also the human kingdom.

But it can also be said, by further expanding the mode of explanation, let us say, of the activity of the organism. And then one can raise it to the artistic level, and one gets, in a certain way, what we call the eurythmic art. One can, to use this Goethean expression, namely, state through sensual-supersensible observation, as a preliminary stage, which movement tendencies are inherent in the larynx and the other speech organs when one prepares to speak or when one speaks. These are not exactly the movements that are transmitted to the air for hearing, but rather they are the tendencies of movement. Only through sensory-supersensory observation can one study this for the individual sound, for word formation, for sentence formation. Then one can transfer it. Just as what the individual leaf offers for observation relates organically to the whole plant and extends to it, so, according to the Goethean principle, what takes place in the larynx and its neighboring organs can be extended to the whole human being, so that this visible eurythmic language arises. So, in a sense, you see the moving larynx in front of you in the individual person and in groups of people.

It is usually misunderstood that one is dealing with a real, visible language. It has often been said by people who have seen such a eurythmy performance that what should be emphasized is not emphasized, namely a certain physiognomic expression in the face, a play of expression and the like. Well, to a certain extent that may be correct; but it is not correct in the extent to which it is demanded. For it is not a matter of some kind of mimic performance or pantomime, nor is it a matter of ordinary dance and the like, but rather of a language that has been specially developed through study. And just as one cannot accompany ordinary spoken language with gestures, so one cannot accompany the visible language of eurythmy with any old gestures or with a facial expression borrowed from the moment. Rather, what is presented here as eurythmy cannot be reduced to anything mimic or pantomime, but the lawfulness only comes to expression when one contemplates the organic, or I might say, melodic succession of the movement.

My dear audience, it is also the case with spoken language that we are dealing with sounds that do not mean something clearly and directly. For then one would not be able to form something artistic out of spoken language in the poetic arts. Therefore, what is pantomimed or mimicked or the like is never really artistic. Rather, just as the artistic element in poetry is based on the fact that phonetic language leaves something behind when one takes its mere meaning, so eurythmy is based on the fact that it is by no means the case that a hand movement or the like means what a hand movement presents when one uses hand movements or the like to help with something that is spoken. Rather, through the inner laws of the human organism, something is brought forth from this organism that expresses the inner soul life through this movement in exactly the same way as the inner soul life is expressed in spoken language.

And so we can shape eurythmy artistically, which is by no means a random gesture, but something that wells up out of the human organism with such regularity when the organism experiences something, just as speech wells out of it. Just as speech is something that comes out of the human organism, so the art of the eurythmic gesture is one that, although the gestures are unequivocally connected with the sound and so on , but which are not thought up at all, and cannot be invented as such for any poem or piece of music, but which so regularly reflect what lies in a poem or piece of music, just as spoken language itself does.

You will then find, on the one hand accompanied by music and on the other by corresponding poetry, what is presented in eurythmy itself, on the stage in the visible language of eurythmy. Precisely that which is expressed in a different form in music or in poetry is revealed in a special way through eurythmy, so that it can be seen. And what is suppressed is more that which is the life of thought, the inner life in speaking, and more consideration is given to the will element that is rooted in the whole human being, which emerges from deep foundations of the human soul. This is precisely what comes out of the movement. Just as speech sounds are, so too are the gestures of eurythmy, which are not thought up at all, nor can they be invented as such for a poem or a piece of music, but which regularly reflect what lies in a poem or a piece of music, just as speech sounds themselves do.

You can also see how language works in eurythmy when recitation or declamation accompanies the eurythmic, as you are experiencing here, [by seeing] how one cannot recite as is often the case today in an unartistic age, where the main emphasis is placed on the prose content of the poem, but which is by no means the main emphasis. Rather, in every truly artistic piece of writing, it is the rhythm, the beat, the melody that is the main thing. One could say – somewhat presumptuously – that there is only as much art in a piece of writing, even if it could have a completely different literal content, as there is in the beat, rhythm, and melodious weaving. This is not felt today, when it is thought that this or that must be emphasized from the prose content and other things should be left out. This is actually an unartistic recitation. Artistic recitation begins only where the musical form, the sound, is grasped. And so one would not be able to accompany eurythmy with recitation in the sense of today's unartistic recitation.

On the whole, it can be said that what is presented in the visible language of eurythmy actually happens in a much less conventional sense. This is because in our civilized life, the linguistic element has acquired a conventional or even a mental coating. However, these two are a thoroughly inartistic element, especially in the civilized languages.

Then I would like to say a few words about the fact that, in addition to the artistic element, this eurythmy also has a thoroughly hygienic-therapeutic side. These are also movements that can be drawn from the organism itself and that also have a healing effect for the child. This hygienic-therapeutic direction is not developed in the same way as in art, but it is developed in a different way.

And above all, there is a third side, the pedagogical-didactic. We have introduced eurythmy as an objective [compulsory?] subject in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Although we have only been able to observe these effects for five quarters of a year or a year and a half, it is already quite clear that the children empathize with and immerse themselves in this eurythmy with great naturalness. For the children sense this soul-inspired movement – which is eurythmy, as well as being an art form – as something that arises directly from the organism. They find their way into it, and what develops is what one might call an initiative of the soul life. This cannot develop at all through ordinary gymnastics.

It must be said – although I am not sure whether many people today would still find it almost offensive if one thought about gymnastics so objectively, but I would not want to go as far as it happened to me a few weeks ago, when a very famous physiologist of the present day, who had seen one of our who had seen one of our eurythmy performances and with whom I later spoke about gymnastics and told him that gymnastics was more for the body and eurythmy more for the whole person because it encompasses body, soul and spirit, said: gymnastics is not an art at all, but a barbarism. As I said, I did not make this statement up. I only mention it because we still face so much hostility towards our eurythmy. But perhaps people will soon think more objectively about these things. They will recognize what such inspired gymnastics is in the classroom and will also recognize that, especially with children (this is less relevant for adults), eurythmy works as a means to wean them of the conventional, the trite, and the untruthful. It is truly a training in truthfulness. When the child is to express this with his whole body, this visible language of eurythmy, he cannot become untruthful, cannot become formulaic, cannot incline towards lies. It is a school of truthfulness for seven-, twelve- or fourteen-year-olds when they undergo these eurythmy lessons at school.

These are the different sides of eurythmy. Today, as I always do at these events, I would like to emphasize: we are definitely only at the beginning with our eurythmy; it may only represent the attempt at a beginning. We ourselves are the strictest critics with regard to what is still missing; but we are also convinced that if you see these performances more often, as I hope you will, you will also be able to see that what was present in the germ has already grown. You may remember how we have been working precisely to create silent forms or to further develop the forms in general, especially in the last few months. If we continue to work in this direction, we will see that there is something in this eurythmy that can be developed in an incredible way, so that we may believe that for this eurythmy, even if it is no longer developed by us but by others, the moment will come when it will be recognized as a fully fledged art alongside the other sister arts. So that is what I wanted to say in a few words in advance of our eurythmic presentation.

The three gypsies“ by Nikolaus Lenau, with music by Jan Stuten
“The drunken song” by Friedrich Nietzsche
Evoe with music by Max Schuurman
“Merlin“ by Nikolaus Lenau
“Elfe” by Joseph von Eichendorff
Saying from the soul calendar (51.) by Rudolf Steiner
“The brittle” and ‘The convert’ by J. W. von Goethe
Saying from the soul calendar (52.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Primal words, Orphic ” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Leopold van der Pals
From the “Chymischen Hochzeit” by Johann Valentin Andreae
“Meine Weisheit tat der Sonne gleich“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
“Mein Kind, wir waren Kinder” by Heinrich Heine
Satirical prelude with music by Leopold van der Pals
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Die Oste”;
“The Waistcoat“; ‘Bim-Bam-Bum’; ‘Northward Look’;
“The Corf Watch”; “Palmström's Clock”; “The Authority”
Humorous prelude by Jan Stuten

Dear ladies and gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words by way of introduction to our eurythmy presentation. I do not wish to explain the presentation, but to say what eurythmy artistry generally seeks to achieve. This eurythmic art uses the human being and his movements as his tools. In its expression, it is a kind of language, visible language - and in the truest sense, a visible language. You will see the moving human being, also moving groups of people, forms of these moving groups of people in space and so on. What is performed there as movements of people is not to be understood in the sense of gestures that are invented to mean something, or in the sense of a mimic dance or the like, but these movements come about through sensual and supersensible observations of what lies in the conditions of spoken language itself and, further, in the conditions of the musical in people, namely singing.

It is important to emphasise that these are not arbitrary movements, any more than they are in the musical expression of tones, their interrelations and their movements, or in human speech. And it is precisely these inner tendencies of movement that are present in these movements of the musical and in human speech that are carefully observed through sensory-supersensory observation and are then transferred to the whole person. In this way, one can see in the person or group of people doing eurythmy an embodiment of the human speech organism. Whereas this is otherwise expressed through tone or sound, here it is expressed through the whole human being or through groups of people. One can say that one thereby creates something which – as visible language artistically processed – has the possibility, initially, as it also happens here, of accompanying that which is given by the poetry on the one hand, and that which is given by the music on the other.

What is actually the poetic content of the poetry, which is already eurythmic - a movement in the theme, in the rhythm, in the beat and so on - can be expressed very succinctly through this visible language. But just as one can sing to a piece of music using the human vocal chords, one can also, I would say visibly sing, which can be done through the eurythmic. Now, however, it is precisely through this eurythmic art that one comes particularly close to the content of the poetry as well as to that which is expressed in music. And perhaps you will be able to agree with me about what this eurythmic art seeks to achieve when I say the following.

What is initially present in the human being as his highest characteristic, so to speak, is his thinking. And the fact that the human being is the bearer of thought distinguishes him from all other beings, to which he belongs as part of nature as a whole. Now, thought can be expressed in an abstract form in the communications of what the human being experiences inwardly, spiritually, in relation to the things of the world, as such a thought, as it lives in science, as it also lives in the communications that one person makes to another in everyday life. As such a thought, it is initially an inartistic element. And the more one strives towards the thought, the more one expresses oneself through the mere thought, the more one falls into an inartistic element.

The poet, who can only see the formation of thoughts, and also the formation of the sound as the expression of the thought, has to struggle with the thought. He must, as it were, lift what he experiences inwardly and emotionally out of the mere thought element. Otherwise he would become prosaic. He becomes poetic, that is, artistic, only by making use of thought, but in a certain sense overcoming thought. Thought is not just the abstract element that lives in our soul when we communicate, but thought is an active element in the whole of the world. And in poetry, in particular, we can see how thought is an active element.

Poetry, right, is divided into epic poetry, or narrative poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry. Take dramatic poetry, for example. Even if you don't see a play on stage, but only read it, you have not grasped it artistically in life if you read it, I might say, in a certain way, abstractly, and merely familiarize yourself with its content. You have only really read the drama, that is, taken it in as a work of art, when you can transform in your creative imagination what lies in the words, in the moving human being, that is, in human form. So that only those who, when they read it, can see the drama in the form have a real idea of the content of a drama.

Or take poetry itself, which is relatively detached from the form: real, genuine poetry always leads us to the human being, and we cannot help but find the song or poem good when it presents us with a human being, albeit in his or her spiritual form, as a feeling human being, through a very mysterious inner being. , the human being, albeit in his or her emotional form, as a feeling human being. Only then can we really have an understanding of a song. There is no abstract understanding of a song if it presents us with an emotional figure of a human being.

In epic, in creative poetry, I need only remind you how the real, the folk, the great epic poet is always striving to add to what he presents, something that draws us out of mere thought and leads us to imagine the figure: “Hector, the hero with the flowing crest”; ‘the fleet-footed Achilles’. But then our perception of the whole ‘Iliad’ expands to include the figures of the country [?].

What we form from our thoughts into a figure is expressed in its highest element in the place where we can grasp this thought with the expression of the thought - but now in its artistic form, where we can get to the highest level with it: this is expressed in the human form itself. We may take any form in nature - which we want - we will see that everything we see in nature, that which we see in terms of form, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see in nature, that which we see For there is no thought, in any abstract form, ladies and gentlemen, that could grasp the human form. [We cannot only not reach it with thoughts, we can only grasp the human being as a creation when the thought first feels its powerlessness in the face of the form, before it can proceed to grasp the form.]

This is what shows us how, basically, poetry is worked out and worked towards in order to grasp what is formative in man.

On the other hand, we find that the other element in man is what continually wants to work its way up through him. But in ordinary life the will is not the pure will; in ordinary life the will follows instinct and even arises from the drives. And the ordinary acts of the will are entirely driven or instinct-driven. And so we come to the point where we say that if a person strives for that which expresses itself in him as will and which in its purity can only be grasped through movement – that is what the musical strives for, through which a person does not move, but in which is expressed that which, after all, lives only in its true form in human movement.

There is a remarkable relationship between human movement and musical movement, between the musical in harmony, melody and so on, and one can well believe that someone who has a feeling for this powerful relationship between nature, between human movement and that which lives in the musical, that such a person can delve tremendously deeply into that which, as an is so mysteriously at the basis of man.

Thus one comes, especially when one lives in the musical itself, to see how the purest expression of the will as movement strives to present itself musically in its purity, and how, on the other hand, in the human form itself, there is an external expression of the thought, which, however, is powerless because it is itself inartistic. I would say that when it passes over into the artistic, realizes itself as artistic in the human form.

All this is indicated in human speech, which permeates the will with the thought, the thought with the will. This is what the poet struggles with when he wants to form something artistic out of speech, seeks to overcome the prosaic, the inartistic.

Thus, we can only recite a poem correctly – and not as it may be done by others – if the recitation is to be accompanied by eurythmy. In this case, we must not place the main emphasis on the prose element of the poem, but rather on what lies at its basis as musical and plastic elements, and these must be brought out in the declamation and recitation. Therefore, it will sometimes not be possible to present what must be striven for in a true art of declamation, especially as an accompaniment to the artistic, and also [according to] the habits that prevail today, in a way that is satisfactory for the same. But it is a return to times when more was understood about declamation and recitation than is the case today. And this return is virtually demanded by the sensory-supersensible gaze. It is self-evident that the movements that are performed all appear to arise directly from the human form. Movements in our eurythmy only exist in such a way that one develops them in such a way that one can think of these movements as creative, as being created, and they bring about what is inherent in them.

Then, as a result, the human form comes about, I would like to say. If everything that you see in the eurythmic movements, scurrying across the stage, everything you see in the individual movements, whether concentrated or expressive, is brought together in a plastic way, you will find the human form, which contains everything that the eurythmic art points to as its goal.

Now, if you imagine that in the human being – the musical element, which wants to merge into dance, already expresses – [that] there is something in the human form itself that forms rudiments [of it] everywhere. You cannot imagine a human limb, especially not the hands, without realizing that you can study the human form itself to see how the desire to move is fundamentally there, and you can find out how it must actually transition into movements. All this forms, gives that visible language which is actually, fundamentally, what the human being can form out of his form in terms of movements, which can give that out of the movements at the same time - like the most beautiful result of the movements, which aims at the human form itself: moved form, human form, how undulating and surging, but also how resting on human movements that is what wants to be expressed artistically through the eurythmic art.

So that which actually lives in the poet as a fully human being — which does not merely speak out of thought and the desire to communicate, but which speaks out of the whole human being and nature — when the poet expresses this and when one listens to it in him: one can also express it through this visible language of eurythmy. And just as one can express what is alive in musical art through the singing voice, so one can also sing in the forms of the art of movement that is eurythmy.

All this basically gives us the opportunity to make of eurythmy what we have tried to do in our Waldorf school, where we have introduced eurythmy as a soul-filled form of exercise alongside gymnastics. From the very earliest stages of their teaching and education, children find that the eurythmic movements that can be produced come naturally from the human organization. Man's knowledge of his own form, if I may use the expression, not just his form but what is formed, is unconsciously artistic. No science could ever describe or encompass what lies in the human being's overall perception, which he has in life and which corresponds to his being shaped. But he also knows, this human being, that this being shaped in himself is actually basically only held-still movements. He knows, so to speak, that by feeling his hand, he is feeling the organ that receives its meaning through movement and that receives its form when one thinks of the movements, the manifold movements that the arm and hand can perform, crystallized, I would say, in the form of the arm and hand.

This feeling for eurythmic movements as a natural consequence of the human form, this feeling for the human form even in the child, is what expresses the diversity of movements. It is this that makes the child feel the eurythmic art so strongly as an educational tool. One can say that the child knows very well, if only it is pointed to the possibility, that when it romps around, this romping around is basically nothing other than the shape itself that has flowed out, and it feels the shape that it carries within itself. The child senses that which is the frozen movement as it now passes over into musical regularity in eurythmy as something that it can also feel at the moment when it becomes acquainted with it, when it is a healthy child in body, soul and spirit. And that is why it likes eurythmy as a means of education.

All that I have been able to describe – eurythmy also has a special hygienic-medical value. Eurythmy therapy has already been developed, and I will only mention it briefly here. All of this, ladies and gentlemen, is still in its infancy today. It is therefore absolutely necessary, again and again, to ask the esteemed audience to be lenient. We ourselves are our own harshest critics when it comes to everything we can already do. But those who are aware that what we can already do today is just a beginning, perhaps only the beginning of an attempt, also know what developmental possibilities lie within this eurythmy. And so we may believe that out of this beginning something will develop that is a fully developed art, which will be able to stand with truly artistic expressions alongside its older sister arts, which have been recognized for a long time and which, if understood with the right feeling, basically point to what will emerge in eurythmy, where not external instruments but the human being themselves are used as the instrument through which the artistic can be particularly enlivened.

And if Goethe says: When the human being is placed at the summit of nature, he takes harmony, measure and meaning together, produces a summit within himself and rises to the production of the work of art, then on the other hand it may be said: It is to be hoped that when man makes use of his own form and movement as a tool and means of expression for the artistic, then in the end that which can be placed as a younger sister art next to the older, fully-fledged sister arts must arise.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain it, but to talk about what this eurythmy actually wants from certain art sources and how it would like to make use of a certain artistic formal language. What you will see, dear audience, on the stage, is the human being in motion or groups of people in motion, also mutual positions of groups of people in relation to each other, and so on.

At first glance, all of this could be mistaken for pantomime. However, eurythmy is not meant in this sense. Eurythmy is meant as a truly visible language. And it did not come about by arbitrarily adding some gesture that one thought right at the moment to this or that element that now comes to light in poetry and music that go hand in hand. Rather, eurythmy as we understand it here has come about through careful, sensual and supersensory observation, to use this Goethean expression, observation of what actually underlies the conditions of underlying human speech and singing.

What underlies speech and singing is not openly apparent to the ordinary observer. The inner tendencies of movement transform themselves into what can then be heard. But it is entirely possible to study the basis of the audible sound in terms of the movement tendency and in terms of the way in which this movement tendency emerges from the human organism.

If we look at poetry, on the other hand, we will have to say to ourselves: what the poet brings to revelation through tone and phonetic language contains and encompasses human thought. But human thought is an abstract element, especially in more advanced civilizations. And every such abstract element is actually inartistic. So that poetry as an art must constantly struggle to bring thought back from its abstractness to that which can bring it into a living element that is connected to the full human being.

When we study the thought as it is to fertilize poetry, we find that, if we do not grasp it in the abstract but approach it as artists, it has a certain tendency to take shape. We find this particularly in poetry. We find it quite outstanding in dramatic poetry. We can only truly stand before a drama artistically when we are able to transform what is given to us through language into form. Even if we do not see a drama on stage but only read it, we only have it as a dramatic work of art if we are able to transform in our imagination what is presented to us into form.

In epic poetry, in narrative poetry, we see that precisely where it appears in a certain popular form – we take the example of Homer – it also tends to develop into a form of its own, a visualization of what is sought through the literal. In Homeric poetry, we find [as constant designations: Hector, the hero with the billowing crested helmet, or: the swift-footed Achilles]; if we start from these more distinct, immediately illustrative examples, we nevertheless find the transformation of the abstract, literal element into the figurative everywhere.

And even in lyric poetry: if we have to stop at accepting the bare word content, or even thoughts or feelings of a lyric poem, then we do not have it as a complete work of art. We must be able to present to ourselves the figure of the soul from which the song's underlying idea has emerged, even if it is in this case in a spiritualized form. The one who approaches speech so artistically, in that this speech becomes what the poet can use of it, will see how what underlies the literal as thought tends towards form.

Now, if we look first at form, the human form is what appears to us as the most perfect in the realm of the sensual, physical world. And we can say that if we want to gain an insight into the human form, starting from thought, the powerlessness of thought immediately becomes apparent. In thinking, we are not really artistic. But we cannot help but say to ourselves: the capacity for thought is what puts man at the top of the creatures in whose midst he is initially placed.

And what we then encounter in the human form, we cannot grasp with thought. All scientific comprehension of the human form falls short. We must, so to speak, experience how thought becomes powerless, how it is transformed, in order to grasp the human form. But still, the path from thought to the human form is viable. And we will say to ourselves: the one element that confronts us in human language and also in human song, the mental element, is an element that tends towards form, an element that we can only really grasp if we seek to recognize the form but not to penetrate it with thought.

But what confronts us in the human form as the other, is that we actually only grasp this form as the result of movement. Anyone who is able to truly grasp the form of, say, a human hand or an arm will say to themselves: everything that I see in such a form only makes sense if I see in this form the movement that has come to rest. The movement, in turn, that is expressed in the entire human form is the will. The will is something that, by revealing itself in the human being, is directly connected to movement. One does not need to be a Schopenhauerian when it comes to music, and yet one can still say: by moving from the element of thought to the element of will, we begin to understand the musical element in the human being. And musical art is actually that which shows us movement, hidden in the calm of the seemingly lively movement of the sound mass.

In this way, humanly created things appear to us as the right expression of thought. What the human being brings forth in his movement, what is fundamentally one with his will, appears to us, revealing itself in a certain way, in the musical element. The musical element is pictorially formed, but it is that which basically underlies everything that is expressed in the individual organ groups, the larynx and its neighboring organs, in speech and song. If we study, in the sense of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, that which is concentrated in the larynx and its neighboring organs as the entire human organization, we ultimately arrive at the human form. And we arrive at the moving human form.

And if one does not just look with the senses, but with the senses and the supersenses, one finds that what lives in the human form can flow directly into movement, and that which lives in movement and is an expression of human will finds its ultimate result in the form of the human being. Therefore, if you look at this wonderful connection between the human form and its overflow into human movement, and on the other hand, movement and its striving towards the human form, artistically, you can extract what you are meant to see here in eurythmy.

It is not arbitrary. It is what can arise naturally from human movement when one uses not only the speech organ but the whole human being as a means of expression, when one tries to add a visible language to the spoken language, which must first be artistically processed so that what eurythmy is as an art can arise.

This eurythmy is preceded by what eurythmy is as language. Then one must realize that such a human language of form, which has come about out of the moving figure or formative movement, can on the one hand accompany poetry, which is then given in recitation and declamation, and on the other hand the musical. One can sing in a visible language just as one can develop it through sound in tone, in song, and one can express that which really underlies the poetry in this visible language just as it is expressed in the poetry itself. Only then one must not look at the literal content, which is actually the prosaic in the poem, but one must look at the tone, rhythm, form of the meter and so on of the poem, which underlies the poem.

Therefore, recitation and declamation for eurythmy cannot be done in the way that is often popular in our unartistic times, namely, by particularly emphasizing the literal, prosaic aspects and regarding the actual art of declamation and recitation as lying in the emphasis of the literal, prosaic aspects. We must go back to older times, to the Goethean and Schillerian concept of recitation and declamation, to the rhythm, meter and thematic content of poetry, if we want to bring out what is actually artistic in eurythmy, if we want to do justice to the poetry when reciting it. For eurythmy brings out of the poem precisely that which the poet has woven into it out of his own secretive nature. So, in essence, poetry is handed over to the whole human being in eurythmy, in that the poet is aware that he will find understanding of his poetry if the opportunity is created to do so from the whole human being, which he would only have to entrust to a part of the human being, namely the speaking human being.

Eurythmy is a means of expression for precisely those things that cannot come out through speech and mere singing, that cannot be brought out through them. And so we can say: it seems from the outset like an unartistic feeling if one wanted to reject such an extension of our art and artistic endeavors just because one is not accustomed to finding this formal language used so far. Those who really have an artistic sense will have to strive for an extension of our art forms and artistic means.

That, dear attendees, is what eurythmy is about for now. You will see – and especially those of you who have been here as spectators before will notice – that we are always trying to move forward.

For example, today we are trying to reproduce the mood of the poem in introductory forms that are not accompanied by recitation or music, in order to lead into the actual poem. Or we try to hold on to the mood for a while in a closing form, so that in such introductory and closing forms we allow the content of the poem to be revealed only through visible language. And one must feel – not speculate about it, not believe that one could grasp it intellectually, which would be inartistic – one must feel what lies in these forms. – You will see, my dear audience, that one can indeed already find the stylistic form of poetry if one is able to enter into the stylistic form of poetry.

What we do here as eurythmy is really still in the early stages of development. But we are striving onwards. We are trying more and more to eliminate all mere mimicry, to overcome all prosaic content, and to create an art in eurythmy in which everything is truly based on the lawful sequence of movements, just as the lawful sequence of tones in music is based on the lawful sequence of movements, so that nothing is arbitrarily gestural. When creating forms, the keynote, the basic mood, must be taken as the basis, that which is the keynote, the basic mood of a poem.

And you will see how we try to distinguish the serious mood of a poem in eurythmy from the mood of a poem that will confront you, for example, in the eurythmic rendition of Morgenstern's Humoresques, some of which you will see today.

It is not so easy to find the basic tone of these Morgenstern humoresques.

Anyone who finds themselves in today's world with completely unbiased senses will find an enormous amount of philistinism in the world. And the philistine element, which admittedly also has its good sides from time to time, is making itself felt in a harmful way in many ways today. After all, for someone like Christian Morgenstern, it is not only what is commonly called philistine in life that is philistine, but much of what is considered very ingenious today is in fact just genius transformed into philistinism. And such metamorphosed genius, which is actually philistinism, then formed all sorts of skewers in a life like the one Christian Morgenstern led.

From all sides, these philistinisms form skewers. And then you realize that you can't really get close to this stuffiness. But life brings you close again. And that is when these thoughts begin, which you have because you keep bumping into these narrow-minded attitudes, to perform all kinds of dances. These are wonderfully graceful dances, which Morgenstern performs, so that real seriousness can laugh and real seriousness becomes profound and meaningful again in laughter. It is wonderful to see here in Christian Morgenstern how logic cannot be used to deal with the illogical philistinism, but how thoughts must be made to dance so that they enter into a kind of negative logic on the other side, which, however, has something extraordinarily convincing about it.

This dance-like quality of Morgenstern's humorous poems, which depict wonderful irony, which really, I would say, offers something convincing to these moods of the times, must be experienced in their style. And then, once you have grasped them, I believe you can also present these dancing thoughts, which arose from the narrow-mindedness of the philistines, in eurythmy. You can show the difference by following the style forms.

This eurythmy has not only an artistic side but also a pedagogical-didactic one. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is now under my direction, we have included eurythmy as a compulsory subject in the curriculum. And you can see how children from a very young age feel completely at home in these movements in an elementary and natural way and are happy to be able to make these movements, happy not just to need to move according to the physiological peculiarities of external gymnastics, but to bring the whole organism into movements that are inspired and spiritualized. So that this child, in this inspired gymnastics, can feel itself so truly as a human being in full naive unconsciousness.

Then there is a hygienic-therapeutic side to this eurythmy, which I only want to point out. The fact that these movements are taken from the healthy form of the human organism means that they can also be used when this organism falls into an unhealthy state, to help it recover.

All in all, I must ask for indulgence today, as I always do before our performances. We are our own harshest critics and know exactly how far we have to go, because we are just beginning with this eurythmy and because what it aims to achieve actually still needs to be perfected. On the other hand, however, one can also point to the almost unlimited possibilities for development: Because the human being, this universe of all the secrets of the world, is used as a tool, not taken as a tool, one can indeed make the confession from inner contemplation that the time will come when eurythmy will be able to stand as a younger sister art beside the older sister arts, which have been fully recognized for some time.

From April 3 to 10, 1921, the second Anthroposophical University Course took place at the Goetheanum, during which several eurythmy performances were also given.

“Melody” by Ludwig Jacobowski with musical accompaniment by Leopold van der Pals
Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (52.) by Rudolf Steiner
“Little Bird” by Edward Grieg ‘Forest Concerts’ by Christian Morgenstern
“Merlin“ by Nikolaus Lenau
Saying from the soul calendar (1.) by Rudolf Steiner
Opening ‘Fateful Question’ with music by Leopold van der Pals
“Lonely” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Drunken Song“ by Friedrich Nietzsche
“The Three Gypsies” by Nikolaus Lenau with music by Jan Stuten
Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “St. Expeditus”; “The Unicorn”; “The Shoes”

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

Allow me to say a few words before our eurythmy performance, not to explain it (artistic work must explain itself), but to say a few words about the sources and the special forms of expression in which this art moves and from which it flows. What we call eurythmy here is by no means — although it expresses itself through the moving human being or through the movement of groups of people — it is not just any kind of gestural art, not just anything mimic or pantomime. Nor should it be confused with what is called the art of dance and the like.

Nowhere is an attempt made to find a gestural expression for any content of the soul in an instant, as one might say, but rather the aim is a real visible language. So that every single movement and the sequence of movements, the conformity of the movements to natural law corresponds to the inner soul experience, just as the individual sound of the spoken or sung word and the sequence of sounds and tones in speech and song correspond to the inner soul experience. If I may use the expression, it has been investigated through sensuous-supersensuous observation in which movement tendency the larynx and the other speech organs find themselves when speech or song is produced. And that which is only present in the potential when speaking or singing, in the potential for movement, is metamorphosed into the movements of the whole person or even of groups of people.

It can certainly be said that the whole person is brought onto the stage in such a way as if it were a moved larynx as a whole. And only someone who, at heart, does not have the right joy and the right feeling for the artistic can object to such an expansion of the artistic. It is precisely this that makes it possible for what is expressed on the one hand through poetry and on the other through music to be revealed in this moving language or in moving song. In this way, that which, I would say, in music and in language is what transforms the two human contents into artistic form, becomes particularly expressible in this visible language or in this visible song.

What lies in the poetry, purely artistically, is, I would like to say, hidden song, hidden musicality or also hidden plastic imagery. What is merely the literal content of a poem is basically only the outer work of the real artistic element. What constitutes the artistic element is already eurythmic in poetry and song.

On the one hand, the human being expresses his or her nature through thought. It is undeniable that in the activity of thinking, in the formation of thoughts, lies that through which man first experiences himself as the most perfect creature within the visible creation in which he finds himself. But when man merely moves thought within himself, he moves in a prosaic way. To move towards the artistic, towards the poetic, it is necessary that the element of thought passes into the creation of form. And it is remarkable how we can see that through the most significant forms of the poetic – through the epic element, through the lyrical element, through the dramatic element – thought seeks to lose itself as thought, to give up its unartistic element and merge into the form.

Take the epic. We see how, let us say, in one of the most exquisite epic creations, in Homer, we see how the conceptual element even in the telling of the story passes over into the shaping: the fleet-footed Achilles or the hero with the billowing helmet. Thought will always attempt to lose itself and metamorphosically transform into form. When we follow it, we only really have a drama before us when we do not limit ourselves to its literal content, but when we recreate in our imagination what the literal content only indicates, I might say like a musical score. We see the life that has been shaped. And perhaps this is just as true for lyric poetry. All lyric poetry that is divorced from the human being always has something uncomfortable about it for the artistic sense. What really goes to our hearts in lyric poetry is that there can be soul in the artistic, but it is presented, shaped, and placed before our mind's eye only individually and uniquely. The more we are gripped by the feeling, the sensing, the experiencing of a person in a song, the more genuinely, originally, and elementarily we also feel the lyric. And so we can say: in that thought wants to become artistic – even in the purely intellectual element of poetry – it strives out of its element of thought, it strives to transition into form.

And anyone who has an understanding of this will be able to feel how, if one wants to approach the human being with comprehension and understanding, how, in the sense of our present-day science of man, one can think, how one can unravel what is before us in the human being. We then cannot manage. If we want to retain the thought and yet understand the human being, we actually fall into an absurdity. When we stand before the human being, we must penetrate to the artistic in order to understand the thoughts. We must penetrate so far that the thought loses itself in the contemplation of the human being, that the inner soul life becomes artistic and the thought passes over into the intuitive apprehension of the human form. This is a stimulating inner task. And it is precisely in this task that we see how, in the end, every genuine true knowledge in the Goethean sense leads to an artistic understanding of the outer world.

On the one hand, it is thought that leads to form and ultimately to the human form. A second element that we perceive in human experience is movement, movement that goes back to the will. You don't have to be a Schopenhauerian to feel that the human essence seeks to pass through the striving will to its purest image, to the musical and song-like. In the musical-singing element, one can already feel that into which the will also wants to flow, just as the form of the thought wants to flow into the thinking. And then one has the second element, that which, as movement, belongs to the human being. But when one stands face to face with the complete human being, one will feel the belonging together, the flowing into one another of form and movement in the human being. We cannot help but, when we look at the details of the human being – let us say the hand or the arm with the hand, for example – we look at the shape, we cannot help but, when we look at the shape, we see in the shape, I would say, the movement that has come to rest. We cannot help but imagine in the shape of the hand that which is directly connected with the movement, with the mobility of the hand.

And so we can only fully grasp everything that is revealed in man if we understand it in its transition into movement, if we approach and understand man as his form arises from movement, from movement that has come to rest, and how, on the other hand, form everywhere wants to transition, expand, flow into movement. Then one has before one that which expresses in the whole human being the same thing that lives in speech and song in terms of inner sound, I would say in terms of possibility, in terms of ideality, to speak in the Goethean sense. And so the same thing can be represented through the moving human being as through speech and song.

One can see how the basis of true poetry can come to light through this eurythmy, precisely because the declamatory, recitative accompaniment gives rise to demands that do not correspond to the purely prosaic demands on recitation or declamation that exist so prominently in our time. Today, the prose content of a poem is particularly emphasized, and this is considered appealing. Attention is paid to the fact that this or that nuance of prose, this or that nuance of content is expressed in this or that way when reciting or declaiming. The actual artistic element is overlooked, which consists in the rhythmic, in the metrical, or also in the pictorialization that underlies the poetry. And it remains an important psychological fact that true great poets such as Schiller, for example, first had an indefinite melody in their soul, on which he then strung the words; or that Goethe had an image in his inner vision, as is the case in the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, in order to then shape the poetic in such a way that he strung together the plastic, pictorial image of what the previous content is.

These things come to light particularly through the art of eurythmy. But since we have music to accompany the eurythmy on the one hand and the recitation of the poetry on the other, it will become clear during recitation and declamation that one cannot simply recite and declaim prosaically, but must always seek in recitation and declamation for the underlying rhythm and beat - or perhaps also for the underlying rhythmic form and emphasize it in particular, that in other words, in eurythmy one is compelled to go back to the actual artistic in the poetic.

With that, dear attendees, I have briefly touched on the essence and formal language of eurythmy. There is also a second side to eurythmy, which I will only mention here: the medical and therapeutic side. Since what is inherent in the human form, in the human organization, is conjured up by the eurythmic movements, these movements, which are carried out, must also be shaped in such a way that they appear as healing movements for the human organism, so that one can develop a hygienic-therapeutic side to this eurythmy. But that should only be mentioned in passing.

I would like to point out a third element that this eurythmy contains: the didactic-pedagogical element. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is run by me, we have made eurythmy a compulsory subject alongside gymnastics. In this sense, eurythmy is a form of animated gymnastics. It does not merely create what gymnastics already does, namely, movement of the human being based on physiological observation. Rather, it creates something that brings to light the body, soul and spirit of the human being in unified movement. And that this can really be felt, that one might say that which lies in the human being passes over into his natural movement, is shown by the successes that have been achieved in Waldorf schools, especially with eurythmy. From the earliest school age, children perceive this soul-inspired movement as something natural, because what they carry out in movement does not merely follow from the physical, but from the whole, from the full human being. We shall see how, in particular, the will initiative can be developed in the child through this element of eurythmy and how many other aspects of the child's soul, spirit and physical life can be fostered if this teaching can be developed more and more. In this way, eurythmy can also provide a fruitful element for pedagogy and didactics.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was the intention of this eurythmy. One can only say, as Goethe once said, that in relation to his entire environment, man stands in art, that this eurythmy adheres entirely to these Goethean intentions. Goethe says so beautifully: When nature begins to reveal its manifest secret to someone, they feel a deep yearning for its most worthy interpreter, art. The deepest secrets of nature are hidden in the human being itself; they reside in the human form. When this form moves, nature reveals its manifest secret. So that one does not have to grasp it in an inartistic way with thought, but can look at it in a directly sensual way, the secret of nature.

But that is precisely how life is created in the artistic. And eurythmy uses the human being itself as its tool. It does not work with external tools and means of expression, but with that which lies within the human being. Goethe says so beautifully: When man is placed at the summit of nature, he in turn perceives himself as a summit, takes in measure, order, harmony and meaning, and rises to the production of the work of art. Should we not be able to rise to the production of a work of art in the most beautiful way, when we make the human organism itself, which is a small world, appear in its own right, in accordance with its own laws, like an excerpt from the whole great world, a tool and means of expression for what we artistically intend?

However, it must be said again and again: we are our own harshest critics, even in relation to what we are already able to do today. But we have tried in a certain way to advance what was originally intended with eurythmy to a certain extent. Today you will see how we bring to life what resonates in the mood of a poem in forms that are accompanied neither by music nor by poetry, so that the mere moving person or group of people can strike the mood of the poem, or that in such mute forms the poem can end in its mood or the music in its mood.

You will also see how we endeavor, if you have the patience, to compare what is achieved in more serious poetry with what is attempted in humorous and picturesque poetry. You will see how eurythmy follows the style forms, how, on the one hand, Fercher von Steinwand's extraordinarily convoluted poetic images, which follow the secrets of the world and mysterious cosmic forces, want to be expressed through forms; on the other hand, you will see how Christian Morgenstern's humoresques have been attempted in the second part, also through special forms, to be captured in eurythmy in the style . What Morgenstern wanted to achieve – which was led to his humorous poems, the “Galgenlieder”, the “Palmström-Lieder” and so on – through what he experienced in the depths of his soul, I would say through humorously experiencing and suffering at the hands of philistinism – can be followed in the eurythmic forms , without resorting to mime or pantomime. Christian Morgenstern felt very strongly what philistinism, which is spreading all around us in our prosaic times, lives out. I would like to say that the narrow-mindedness, the spears that philistinism sends out in all directions, hurt a sensitive nature like Christian Morgenstern's everywhere, and that is how his thoughts came to dance. They were repulsed everywhere by the spears of philistinism, especially by that philistinism which today wants to appear ingenious, which, precisely because it wants to appear ingenious, behaves so ingeniously. This quivering back, this dancing of Christian Morgenstern's thoughts through the spears of philistinism, that is what, I would like to say, in turn challenges a particular sub-form of eurythmy.

In all of this, however, what we can already offer today remains a beginning. We must ask for forbearance in this regard. We are our own harshest critics, but we believe that, after what we have taken as our starting point for this eurythmic art and after the forms in which we develop it, which are thoroughly grounded in the human being, that this younger sister art will one day be able to stand alongside the older, fully-fledged sister arts, provided it continues to be developed.

The performance of April 9, 1921 took place in the carpentry workshop, and the closing ceremony of the Second Anthroposophical College Course as a “performance of eurhythmic art and musical performances” took place on April 10, 1921 in the Goetheanum building, with the “Ariel Scene” from “Faust” eurythmically presented with music by Max Schuurman and Henry Zagwijn.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Second scene from the mystery drama “The Awakening of the Soul” by Rudolf Steiner

Prelude “Planetary Dance”

“World Soul” by J. W. v. Goethe with music by Max Schuurman

“Proem” by J. W. v. Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (1.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Mount Olympus” by J. W. von Goethe

Saying from the Calendar of the Soul (2.) by Rudolf Steiner

“Good Night” by Engelbert Humperdinck (children's group)

“The Beech's Guests” by Rudolf Baumbach with music by Jan Stuten (children's group)

“Beim Anblick einer Gans” by J. Fercher von Steinwand

Humoresques by Christian Morgenstern: “Der Schnupfen”; “Der Aromat”; “Die Geruchsorgel”; “Das Butterbrotpapier”; “Mondendinge”

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

As on previous occasions when these eurythmy exercises were performed, I would like to introduce them with a few words today, in which I will speak about the particular artistic means, the formal language, in which this eurythmic art moves. The point is that on the stage we see a language that is truly inaudible but visible, a language that is performed through movements of the individual human being, through movements of groups of people and so on. What the human being performs is then accompanied either by music or by the recitation of poetry. And what occurs in the movements of the individual human being or the group of people should be the same revelation through a visible language or through a visible song, as on the other hand the same motifs are revealed musically or poetically, through recitation.

But it is not a matter of some kind of mime or pantomime or other kind of gestural art being the basis here; nor is it a matter of what is called dance in ordinary life being the basis here. Rather, it has been developed into a language of the human form and human movement that is just as essentially fixed as the language of sound and song itself, in which the human form lives, only in a different way. This has come about through the fact that, through sensual and supersensory observation, the movement tendencies that underlie the audible sound, the word formations and so on, and also the sentence formations, have been overheard in the human larynx and the other speech organs. In this way, something has come about that is as internally logical in the sequence of sounds as musicality, for example.

If you want to see what this eurythmic art is actually about, then it is useful to consider some of human development. Human development proceeds in such a way that [it is clear –] although it is not visible more clearly in historical times, but only in prehistoric times – how certain expressions of human life, let us say, for example, his ability to move, his ability to speak, have developed.

For our purpose here, I would like to point out one thing. There is an interesting fact, already known to ordinary science today, that points to an element of development in the human race: it is the fact that in the older languages, the primitive languages, for the human movement that then became dance, for the rhythmic movement that, as I said, later transformed into the movements performed during the dance, that for these “primal ic” movements, and for singing, there was only one word. They did not distinguish between what they were convinced belonged together: singing and rhythmic movement of the human body. In a sense, primitive man felt compelled, whenever possible, not to make sounds with still limbs, but to always accompany them with some movement of his limbs. He then also behaved in such a way that, when it was possible, the work he performed and in which he moved his limbs, when it was possible, he performed this work in such a way that his limbs could move in a certain rhythm, a certain regularity that arose instinctively in him.

This, which was characteristic of man in very early times, then became differentiated. As man advanced in civilization, the movements that arose from the will, so to speak, separated to a certain independence; they adapted more and more to the outer life. Only the leg movements did not retain a certain freer mobility, but the arm movements did. But even in these, I would say that in the leg movements, which were emancipating themselves from the tonal, the singing, that which was possible in such movements when they did not serve mere utility was still held back. These movements were, as it were, relegated to the instinctive will, to all that which the human being then placed in the indeterminate, unconscious will as his own humanity. In this way, the movements that had previously always been linked to song became differentiated into ritual dances. And even what in older times were called “love dances” had in a sense become differentiated. But it differentiated in such a way that in the case of cult dances, the movements, which used to be more closely related to the [gap in the text] and the emotional, were led down into the nobler unconscious, while in the case of love dances, they were led down into the instinctive unconscious will-like movements, which were also felt as one with singing, with the sounding word.

On the one hand, the movement that comes from the will differentiated and separated itself. On the other hand, what lay in the sound, in the word, differentiated itself, in that the movement increasingly passed over into the useful and the playful, and also into the cult-like in certain peoples. So that the word became the word of knowledge, into which, as it were, everything that can be expressed thoughtfully through the word was pressed from the intellect. So that, while the lower movements differentiated themselves into the useful, the words differentiated themselves into the means of knowledge and into the external conventional means of communication.

By advancing to a spiritualization of that which is given for human knowledge, the word is again imbued with the spirit, which in turn can then connect with the will. But, my dear attendees, if you want to achieve something artistic, you have to overcome the intellectual and the conceptual wherever possible. The intellectual and conceptual is paralyzing for art. But that which lives as spirit in the intellectual and conceptual can in turn be united with movement.

Now, what was once, I would say, a unified human revelation in the art of song and movement, for which there was only one name, is intimately connected with the human breathing rhythm. And the peculiar thing is that one can say that what actually plays from the innermost part of the human being, from this interplay of the spiritual-soul, physical-bodily, as it is expressed so finely in the breathing rhythm and the pulse, is more than in what is human rhythm in general. On the one hand, we can see how what is, so to speak, in the head becomes the intellectual in the word, and how, even if only in a slight way, arrhythmia occurs in the rhythmic being of the human being. And in the same way, arrhythmia occurs when the human being's mobility develops only in terms of what is useful.

If we now try to discern through sensory and supersensory observation what has now differentiated itself as a single group of organs in the activity of speaking, then we can see particularly well how this speaking is connected to breathing, how the breathing movements, so to speak, interact with speaking in one, but how the interplay of the thought and intellectuality causes arrhythmia. And we find arrhythmia in, I would say, an overly developed intellectual speech. But we also find arrhythmia in a speech that is too strongly based on the mere principle of utility.

By now trying to go back to the inner essence of man, to that inner essence that expresses itself, if I may put it this way, in the purely human rhythm and thus also coming back to how the sound adapts to this pure human rhythm, we find on the one hand that the true poet unconsciously arranges his speech in such a way that he lutes and words and in the whole sentence structure of the language in such a way that it connects to the pure human breathing rhythm or at least stands in a very specific relationship to this pure human breathing rhythm.

But as our civilization is today, if one were to start from the intellectual and rational, much that is arrhythmic would still enter into the human being. On the other hand, if we start from what develops out of the full human being in the will, we can already work back into the [movements of human limbs, especially the movement of the arms,] so that the soul-spiritual can also be expressed in the arm movement, as it was once developed out of human nature. In this way, and in exactly the same way, only in a different direction, in the movements of the human limbs, especially the arms, something similar is achieved to that which is present in the shaping of the air movements that are released from the rhythmic breathing process. One then expresses in a visible language the same thing that is formed in the air when the word is sounded. And one thereby gains the possibility of translating into the visible what is musically at the basis of song, what is poetically at the basis of formative language.

So here we do not have ordinary poetry, or a gestural art or a mimetic art, but a real expression of the human soul and spirit in the physical body, in the most beautiful harmony, in the same way as in those speech formations that are not borrowed from the principle of external utility, but that reveal themselves out of human nature itself. All that is striven for through eurythmy actually reveals what underlies a poem, what underlies a song, on the one hand from the musical side, and on the other from the pictorial side, from the plastic-creative side. And that which has lived in the poet as a fully human being comes visibly to the outside for revelation.

You can also see that, for example, all the bad habits of recitation and declamation, which are developing particularly abundantly today in an unartistic time, must be avoided. All the insertion of the prosaic content and the literal element into recitation and declamation, where one has particularly the emotional, inner emphasis – which is not intended to be a harsh judgment on the emotional, but it must merge into rhythm, tact [or into that which is plastic, image-like]. All the aspects that are particularly emphasized in prose recitation and declamation cannot be used for the declamation and recitation that should accompany the visible speech presented in eurythmy. For it is precisely that which is genuinely and truly artistic that is drawn from the realm of poetry. And in poetry it is not the literal meaning, but rather the underlying meter and rhythm, which is then expressed in the shaping of the language.

Therefore, even today, some people who are perhaps already sufficiently shocked by the eurythmic art itself are particularly shocked when they hear the special way of declaiming and reciting as an accompanying art, as it is required for this eurythmy.

This is something that is still widely misunderstood today: what this eurythmy is striving for, this visible language. Critics appear, such as “something is being shaped automatically” - one can predict - that our eurythmists showed too few facial movements, and yet the face would be the most expressive, and so on. For someone who really engages with the connection between the human soul and spirit and the visible language that appears here in eurythmy, it is as if someone were tempted to accompany what they say with continuous unnatural grimaces. That is why it is important that what is expressed should be expressed through a special language of form, through a special language of movement – and not through what otherwise also accompanies our ordinary speaking, for example, as random gestures or random facial expressions.

This is what I would like to say today about the one side of our eurythmic art: the artistic side.

I would just like to mention that this eurythmy also has a second element, an important hygienic-therapeutic one. Since the movements are taken from the human being itself, they can also be shaped in such a way that they have a direct healing effect. And movements can be found that must then proceed in a somewhat different way than those formed purely for artistic purposes, which can then also play a significant role in therapy, in hygiene. I just wanted to mention that.

The third element I would like to mention is the didactic-pedagogical aspect of our eurythmic art. At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is under my direction, we have had the opportunity to introduce this eurythmy as a compulsory subject. And it can be seen that from the moment the child enters primary school, they already feel it as a matter of course to live in these eurythmic movements. They feel how what is being developed here as a movement emerges from the whole being of the human being. This has already been clearly demonstrated in the practice of the Waldorf school. And so we have this eurythmy as a soul-inspired gymnastics, while in ordinary gymnastics there are only physiological processes. So that what affects the human body is taken into account, as we do in eurythmic didactics and pedagogy, that spirit and soul work together with the body, that the whole person is engaged in the activity. And here we can see for ourselves – our time, in which the Waldorf school exists, has been quite enough for that – how the eurythmic element is a training of the will initiative, how the impulses that are unleashed and released within the human being are in fact deep impulses of the will. If we consider how much our time needs the training of the will initiative, we will admit that it is indeed important that such bescelte gymnastics be practiced in our schools.

These are the various aspects of our eurythmic art, as far as they can be developed at present. That this eurythmic art is justified may already be seen from the fact that it is used to make use of that which is, as it were, an extract, an imprint of the whole great world, that is to say, a small world: the human organism itself, as an instrument for artistic activity. And if, on the one hand, Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to someone, that person feels an irresistible yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art,” then it must be said that human nature will reveal itself most beautifully through art when the human being uses his own organism as the tool for this art.

And when, on the other hand, Goethe says: “By being placed at the summit of nature, man beholds himself as a complete nature, which must bring forth a summit within itself. To do so, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.He can also rise to the production of the work of art if he not only places himself at the summit of nature in order to take measure, harmony, order and meaning from the external nature, but if he seeks measure, harmony, order and meaning in his own being, sets these in motion, makes himself the expression of the secrets of the world and makes visible in speech that which mysteriously moves through the human soul.

And when art is most beautiful when what the eyes see externally frees the spirit at the same time, and when everything that wants to give spirit becomes an external expression of the senses at the same time, then one can say: eurythmy fulfills these requirements. For that which the human being experiences inwardly in soul and spirit, by reliving the most beautiful products of language, the poems: that also comes to expression outwardly in the senses, visibly for the eye. Thus, in this eurythmic art, we have, quite obviously, the outer visible and the inner soul-spiritual of the human being working together, which, when they work together, give the most noble, the most beautiful expression of art.

We still have to apologize for some things because we are still in the early stages of this eurythmic art. And yet, the distinguished guests who are here often will have seen how we have been working, especially in the development of introductory silent forms, silent endings and the like, where we can show that in the eurythmic forms, even when nothing is spoken or recited, there is something linguistic, something visibly linguistic. But after all, this eurythmy is only at its beginning. Perhaps it will also be seen that when the poetic is already directly conceived rhythmically, when everything is looked at down to the last word — and that is the case in my “mystery dramas” — I would like to say that then the eurythmic expression arises by itself. This will be the case with the first part that we will perform today before the break, which is intended to provide a eurythmic rendition of a scene from one of my “mystery dramas”. After the break, there will be eurythmic renditions of other poems.

As I said, we must apologize. We ourselves are the strictest critics of what eurythmy can do today, but we are also in the midst of its developmental possibilities - they will perhaps first be developed by others, not by ourselves. But these possibilities for development are such that one can indulge in the hope that this youngest sister among the arts will one day be able to stand worthily beside her older sister forms, which are already fully entitled today.

My dear Friends,

In times past when men had a more intense, but of course still instinctive, feeling of what it is in man that reveals itself in his speaking, they were aware of the process that does actually take place in the forming of speech, a process that consists in the astral body laying hold—quite simply—of the etheric. today we speak and talk, knowing no more of what is going on within us at the time than we do in regard to any other of our actions; for of the complicated inner processes that accompany all human activities we are quite unaware. And it is of course only right that we do not watch our actions too closely while we are doing them, or they would lose their spontaneity. But one who sets out to be an artist in the forming of speech and in the use of mime and gesture must learn to recognise how astral body and ether body have here found their way into an independent co-operation; at any rate, during the time of his training the reality of this should be constantly present to his consciousness. The artist must have felt—I do not say he must have seen, but he must have experienced in feeling what it means when we say that through the working together of astral body and ether body a second man has been begotten within us, has been set free within us, and lives in speech.

The life that now makes its appearance is, however, so richly and delicately formed within that it is in fact difficult for us to perceive how, over and above the content of our speaking, something is detaching itself from us in the whole body of the speech; and that is why it is so important that during his training the student should learn to apprehend what is happening here with his speaking, apprehending it with the insight of an artist. For he can do so; and it will help him more than anything else to make his speaking inwardly strong and mobile. With this end in view, let him practise his exercises as far as possible as though he were a person who cannot speak but wants to. This is a situation that can well occur in life, for it is only in connection with other human beings that we ever learn to speak.

There have been not a few instances in history of persons who have grown up in solitude, living almost the life of a wild animal. Such persons, in spite of possessing good and sound organs both for hearing and for speaking, have yet not learned to speak. If in course of time someone discovered them, he was bound to assume that they could quite well have learned to speak, and had only not done so because they were not together with other human beings.

It has generally been found, however, that human beings left in this way in solitude do make a kind of modest attempt at speaking. They will produce some such sounds as hum, ham, häm, him—that is to say, the sound h swept along into the production of gesture with some rather undefined vowel sound in between. And on investigating this groping attempt at speech, we find that as we boom out this sound-sequence, we can become conscious of how our astral body is here seizing hold of our ether body. Try uttering again and again these sounds: hum, ham, häm and so on, and you will feel as though something were liberating itself from you and living purely in vibrations. If you were to introduce this as an exercise in schools of dramatic art, and have the pupils booming out hm, it would create a most singular impression; you would feel as though a great buzzing were rising up out of you all, like an independent entity on its own. Anyone who has had this experience will readily agree that we have here an excellent first exercise for the forming of speech.

Let your students begin with practising: hm, hum, ham, häm, and it will bring movement into their speaking.

hm, hum, ham, häm.

They must of course then go on to something else; for if they continued with that exercise alone, you would be leaving them in the condition of savages. The point is, that for their start they should go back to the first elements where speech begins to free itself, begins to come forth from the human being.

Let me say here, in parenthesis, that one should not of course use this method with children. It has no pedagogical value. As soon as we begin to study things with the eye of an artist, it becomes necessary to make a clear distinction between the different spheres of life. Anthroposophy never tends to disturb or confuse the different kinds of human activity; on the contrary it assigns to each its proper sphere, and furthers its growth and progress in that sphere.

And now, how shall we continue our instruction? We have in the course of these lectures learned to distinguish among the consonants’ impact’ or ‘thrust’ sounds, and then again ‘breath’ or ‘blown’ sounds. We become either throwers of the spear (in the impact sounds) or trumpeters (in the breath sounds). In between we have the ‘wave’ sound l, and the trembling or ‘vibrating’ sound r in its various forms—the palatal r, the tongue r. These two come in between.

Now it is important to see what lies behind this grouping of the consonants For it is no arbitrary grouping, made to fit into some scheme. It is derived from the speech organism, and a fact of far-reaching significance lies behind it.

When we speak, we ‘form’ the air. This is true of all speaking of whatever kind or quality: we speak by forming the air. And we form it in ever so many different ways. Now you can get a magnificent feeling of this forming of the air, if you repeat over and over again hm, hum, ham. For you have here what I might describe as speech in full swing. Once you have experienced the great swing of speech, you will feel as you go through the impact sounds—d, t, b, p, g, k, m, n—that when you come to say hm, you would really like to achieve at long last the actual push or impact, you would like to take yourself with the hm right into it. And at the same time you can feel that you want to mould the body of the air out there in front of you to an enclosed form or figure. And you are really wanting to do this, not only with m but with all the sounds that I have named in this left-hand column (see page 378). You do not quite succeed; the endeavour shows itself only in nascent condition. Nevertheless, in the case of all these sounds there is the desire on our part to enter with them into the enclosed form that is taking shape out there in the air. As we utter these’ impact’ sounds, we feel we would like to mould the air to a complete and shut-in form. And now we can well imagine we want to go farther and see what these forms are like.

When we form the sound d, we are really wanting to form in the air a figure rather like a kind of runnel which we hold up before us like this, so that it is closed in front. That is the kind of form we want to be making as we say d.

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When we say b, it is as though we were wanting to make an enclosed form rather like a little ship.

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With k, we have the definite feeling of wanting to form with our speech something like a tower or pyramid

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With all these sounds we are conscious of a desire to harden the air. What we would like best of all is that the air would crystallise for us. We have indeed clearly the feeling, as we utter the sounds, that actual bodily forms are there before us spirting up into the air; and we are even surprised that these forms do not begin to fly about. As we come to feel our speaking, we are astonished that when we put forth all our strength, we cannot see b and p, d and t, g and k flying about around us, that we cannot see ms flying about like spirals or ns like the curled-up tails that animals sometimes have. We are quite astonished that this does not happen. For the remarkable thing is that these impact sounds, although we form them in the air, have all the time an inclination to the earth element. With these sounds, in fact, we work right into that which is earth in the world of the elements; they are proper to the element of earth. (See table on page 378.) And from this correspondence of impact sounds with the element of earth we can learn something that will be most useful for us in our study of speech.

For if, as we speak k, we imagine before us a crystal form shaped somewhat like a tower, if we hold this form clearly before our mind's eye, that will do a great deal towards purifying our utterance of the sound. It will also make supple the organs we use in speaking the sound. And we shall find it a wonderful help if while speaking the sound m we imagine a climbing plant—some variety of bindweed, for example—that twines itself round the stem of another plant.

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And then for n, we cannot do better than think of the woodruff, with its wreath of petals at the top of the stem.

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Thus, to find the inner content of impact sounds, we have to go to the earth, we have to conjure it forth from the element of earth.

Suppose you want, for example, to get to know more intimately the inner configuration of the sound p. Call up before your mind's eye the sunflower plant, that bold-faced annual that lifts itself up to such a height. Look at its enormous overhanging golden flowers that spread out their centres so conspicuously for all to see. There you have the sound p most marvellously displayed.

To call forth from the forms and shapes in which the earth element manifests, to conjure up from them the impact sounds, will bring our speaking a stage onward. And then, what this exercise does for us will have to be brought into the lovely and smooth-running flow of speech. Let me show you how this can be achieved.

Think of the pyramid, which so well expresses a k; for as we say k, we live—in speech—in the pyramid Now let the pyramid fall down and crumble to dust. This will mean, we let the k sound pass over into the l sound, and do you see? What before was solid and firm, is now all in flow, runs away like water. k–l—it runs away like water. What is it in a Keil (a wedge) that makes it of value for you? A wedge that won't wedge itself in, a wedge that doesn't run in has no sense. The k is right too, for a wedge has a shape like a pyramid when you stand it up on end; but the main point for you about a wedge is that it slips in easily. Keil—the word is marvellously pregnant of meaning. Speak the word, and feel at the same time what the Keil does, feel the cleft it makes as it eases its way in. Feel then also how the firm solid element meets with hindrances as it goes over into flow, and how these find expression in the vowel, in the ei. In truth, a wonderful word! You can do the same with all the impact sounds. Bring them together with l, and you will find you are bringing them into a right and beautiful flow of speech.

You can also go the other way about, you can begin with something that is in flow and arrest it, establish it Practise saying the word Diele (a deal or plank). It flows in the mouth wonderfully. And now take it backwards. Set out with what is living and in flow, and carry it into the earth element, letting it become fast and firm. Diele reversed takes on a most beautiful form: Lied (a song). The song, to begin with, lives—in the soul; it is then given form, and wrought into a poem: Lied. You should learn to feel what lies behind these transitions from one sound to another.

Take now the sound t and follow it with an l. T expresses a hardening, a making firm; and then what has been made firm goes sloping away in l. In the word Tal (a dale or valley) you have a wonderful picture of this process. The land that has been pressed down hard runs out on to the plain below.

Now reverse the process. Take what is in flow and make it firm; and you have a Latte (a lath).

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The sap in the living wood is in flow, and becomes hardened in the lath. Going through a word in this way, entering right into the feeling of each sound in turn, you come at last to the word's own secret.

Suppose now we go through the same process as we did with Keil, but take this time some tool we can manipulate by ourselves and turn easily in any direction. For a wedge, we usually require of course the help of a hammer; now we will take instead a tool with which we can make nearer contact—the one I have in mind is actually rather like a little boat that we can steer whither we will: Beil (an axe). The word answers well to the description and demonstrates quite clearly the difference between k and b.

Now take Beil backwards. Begin with the flow and then make it fast. Instead of bringing your axe into swing, you now bring what is alive into form, enclosing it in firm form—and you have Leib (a body).

Continued practice in uniting impact sounds with the wave sound 1 will work wonders for you. Your speaking will have clearly defined contours, and will at the same time flow well; your words will be formed and finished and yet follow one another in the sentence with ease and fluency.

From now on, therefore, let this association of impact sounds with the wave sound l be designated as the ‘Stoss-Wellen’ (Impact-Wave,—‘press-home and let-flow’). For special attention should be given to this sound-process in speech training. Students can learn from it how to form and frame their single words and at the same time also how to bring them into flow, so that the whole sentence runs like a smoothly flowing stream. All this can be learned from the practice of ‘Stoss-Wellen.’ To describe things of this kind, we have, you see, to look round for new expressions.

Taking our start in this way from impact sounds and going on to 1, we find that we have passed from earth to water. For in the impact sounds we have the element of earth and in l that which essentially signifies the fluid element, water. You can even hear in the sound an imitation of water. But now let us suppose that water becomes so tenuous that it begins to vibrate and quiver inwardly; in effect, we begin to find ourselves in the element of air. The water is evaporating, is turning gaseous, is wanting all the time to pass into the inwardly aeriform condition. This means, we are no longer satisfied to remain in the perpetual inner flow of the watery element; the inner vibration of air must now begin for us. We have this in the sound r. The air that we use for speaking, vibrates inwardly in r. R belongs to the element of air.

Imagine you have a box in front of you. You open it, hoping to find in it a present from a friend. You feel sure there is something really exciting in that box. You open it—and there is nothing there, nothing at all! And all that flow of feeling in you (l) evaporates. Before, the moisture on your tongue had been all in movement. You open the box, and air comes to meet you, nothing but quivering air. You exclaim: Leer!¹ (empty). In this word leer the whole course of your experience is described—even to your starting-back which is so forcibly expressed in the double e. It would indeed be impossible to find a more adequate description of your disappointment than is given in this gesture ... and this word leer. Gesture and word taken together reproduce the experience with marvellous accuracy.

A great deal can be learned by observing words in this manner; continuing in such a study, the actor will be able to fulfil with freedom and fluency all that is required of him.

And now let us suppose that we take this vibration, this quivering, and form it, out there in the air. You will soon see what happens if you study a trumpet, not of course the metal part, but what goes on inside the trumpet when you blow. Study this carefully. Provide yourself with a highly sensitive thermometer and see what it will reveal inside the trumpet, when the vibration begins to assume forms and figures corresponding to certain tones. You will find different temperatures registered in different parts of the trumpet. This is as much as to say that the processes taking place in the trumpet express themselves in the element of fire. And the same is true of all breath sounds. When we utter feelingly the sounds: h, eh, j, sch, s, f, w, we are taken over into the element of fire or warmth. For these sounds live in the element of warmth.

You will also see from this what happens when you say hum. You set out from the warmth element; you are working, to begin with, with your own warmth. In the h you release your warmth, you let it out. Then you catch hold of what you have placed outside you and feel it as a consolidation of your being, of your whole being: hum. You take hold of your warmth and make it fast and firm: hum, ham, and so on.

Again, suppose you want to picture something that is alive, that has life in itself and is ready to go on living on its own. Continued practice with ‘breath’ or ‘blown’ sounds will bring you this experience. Words that have only such consonants are not so frequently met with, because what is alive is not posited by us as easily as are fixed objects; nevertheless you will find them here and there, where something that is outside in space is pictured as alive and unstable; and here you will again have opportunity to make interesting studies. Say, you want to express that an object is alive, but its life is uneasy, is precarious. You may describe the object as schief (aslant, on the incline).² The word itself suggests that the object could at any moment—instead of remaining in life—fall over and come to grief: schief.

Suppose, however, you want, on the other hand, to consolidate what is alive and mobile. Then you will have to see how you can make stand up straight something that is naturally, of itself, full of weaving, flowing life. Imagine before you a form. At first it is a tiny little form. It grows and grows; it rises, runs up higher and higher and becomes eventually quite tall. But now you want to express that the living, weaving form has shot up in a line. You say it is schlank (lank or slender). You begin with the sch, which tells of life, and go into the l (flowing), and then, with the k, which makes the life stand up in a straight line, you come back in the end to an impact sound.

There is still another transition that should without fail be practised by any student who wants to form his speech artistically. For he will want to be able to speak so that his speaking streams out over the audience. He will not attain this by concentrating on the individual sounds he has to utter; rather does it depend on the whole general character he is able to give to his speaking.

For an actor, this is obviously a matter of first importance. His words must penetrate to the farthest limits of the theatre, they must become a living presence throughout the space of the auditorium. This result can be achieved by the following exercise; and he who knows it will find himself in possession of an esoteric secret of the art of speech. The exercise consists in letting the vibrating air move on into breath sounds, thus: Reihe, reihen, reich, rasch, Reis, reif.

And supposing you want the very sound itself to have a hypnotising effect, you can do as the lawyer did of whom we were speaking yesterday, who advised his client to say: veiw. A fine and delicate perception lies behind the use of this sound-sequence in the piece we were studying yesterday. It is, I may say, quite wonderful how many features and details in those old plays, features that were of course introduced quite instinctively, are in perfect accord with the laws of human life.

And so, in order that our speaking shall mould the sentence plastically, we must learn to form in it especially the sounds that belong to earth and water; and for our speaking to be alive and effective we must learn to give form to the air- and fire-sounds—the air-sound r and the breath sounds. I do not mean to imply that what we say will have to be expressed with these sounds. But by practising sound sequences that contain earth sounds and the water sound, we can learn to form a sentence so that it has an inner plastic force; and we can on the other hand learn how to speak impressively, so that we may with comparative certainty assume that what we say has penetrated, has gone home, by practising the exercise I gave just now, the exercise that goes between the air sound r and the fire sounds. The actor will need to develop his speaking in both these directions: he must speak beautifully, and he must also impress his listener. And I have given you here the technique whereby he can learn both.

There is still another thing which is necessary for one who wants to make progress in the forming of speech. He has to acquire the faculty of carrying into the realm of the intimate every feeling or impression that is awakened in him from without; he must be able to bring it right home to himself in an intimate way. Let me make this clear by an example.

Take the sensation that many of you are experiencing in these days when the ‘inner configuration of the air’ in this lecture room forces itself upon your notice. Some of you, I know, feel it distinctly uncomfortable. We will take the most simple and primitive sensation that someone may have. He perceives that it is hot in here—with all the other feelings that can go with this experience. Or let us say that for his feeling the room is warm—simply warm.

Now, anyone who has interested himself at all in the forming of speech will know that a word like ‘warm’ can be spoken in a variety of ways. You are probably familiar with the delightful little story illustrative of the saying: Der Ton macht die Musik.³ Little Itzig writes home to his father: ‘Dear Father, send me a gulden!’ The father cannot read, so takes the letter to a notary who reads out to him in a peremptory, rude tone of voice: ‘Dear Father, send me a gulden!’ ‘Whatever next! The good-for-nothing little scamp will get no money out of me, if he writes like that! Is that really what he says?' But now the poor father cannot after all find it in his heart to leave the matter at that, so he goes to the parson. The parson takes the letter and reads out to him in a gentle, quiet tone : ‘Dear Father, send me a gulden!’ ‘Is that really what he says?’ ‘Certainly!’ replies the parson. ‘The dear little fellow, I'll send him one right away!’ Yes, everything depends, you see, on the tone of voice! Similarly, the word `warm' can be spoken in many different ways. But, my dear friends, if that is so, we must be able to bring into the sounds of the word all the different fine shades of feeling that we want to express. And that has to be learned; we have to learn how to do it.

Let us return to our supposition that someone feels the room warm. (I choose this for my example, since I have a suspicion that quite a number of you may be experiencing this feeling at the present moment.) And now let him follow the experience back into the subjective. Let us imagine he shuts his eyes, forgets there are other people around him and says to himself: Es saust (I feel a buzzing or whizzing sensation in my head!). He calls the ‘being warm’ a sensation of buzzing because he can feel it like that when he withdraws into himself and experiences it subjectively. Try to distinguish different kinds of buzzing that you can experience. When you are very cold, you feel inside you quite another kind. One could imagine, it might almost become a habit to have, when the room is warm, this inner sensation of buzzing.

warm: a buzzing sensation.

Practise this, entering into the inner feeling of it; and it will help you to make your intonation of the word ‘warm’ accord with the precise shade of experience that you want it to express. Exercises of this kind should be included in your training.

Take another: I am cold. Es perlet (I feel a tingling, a stinging sensation—and this time, especially in my legs and arms).

cold: a tingling or stinging sensation.

The more of such examples that you can find for yourselves, the better. See where you can take some word that expresses a perception or sensation, and lead it over into an experience that is more intimate, that touches you more nearly. To carry over in this way a perception that is at first more remote and separate into the realm of the intimate will give to your speaking the right inner ‘feeling’ tone.

So we have now four properties of speech:

The feeling tone of speech,
The beautiful, smooth flow of speech,
The revelation of oneself that is given out in speech,
The penetrating and convincing power of speech.

These are, every one of them, a matter of technique. The actor has simply to learn the technique for achieving them.

In past ages, such things were known instinctively, and men were also aware of their fine spiritual significance. In the school of Pythagoras, for example, the pupils had to recite strongly marked rhythms, the aim being to intervene by this means in human evolution, taking hold of what was instinctive and developing it further by education.

Take a line of verse that runs in trochees or dactyls, such as:

Singe, unsterbliche Seele, der sündigen Menschen Erlösung!⁴

A rhythm of this nature, chanted in a kind of singing recitative, Pythagoras would use in his school to tame the passions of men. He knew its power. And he knew also that verse in the iambic rhythm has the.effect of stirring up the emotions. Such things were well known to the men of earlier times, just as they knew too that the art of music takes us back to the Gods of the past, the plastic and pictorial arts lead us an to the Gods of the future, while the art of drama, standing between the two, conjures up the Spirits of the time in which we live.

We too must learn to perceive truths of this nature. A knowledge of them must return again among mankind; only then will art be able to take its right place in life.

It is really also quite remarkable how strongly the instinctive can still make itself feit in this domain. Look at the popular poetry composed by the Austrian poet Misson, the Piarist monk who wrote in dialect. If you study Misson's biography and read of all the other things that he did, you will find that he obviously wanted this poetry to have a soothing, calming effect. He accordingly chose for it, not the iambic metre but, notwithstanding that he was writing in dialect, the hexameter.

Naaz, iazn loos, töös, was a ta sa, töös sàckt ta tai Vada.
Gottsnam, wails scho soo iis! und probiast tai Glück ö da Waiden.
Muis a da sàgn, töös, was a da sa, töös las der aa gsackt sai.
Ih unt tai Muida san alt und tahoam, wöast as ee, schaut nix aussa.
Was ma sih schint und rackert und plàckt und àbi ta scheert töös
Tuit ma für d'Kiner, was tuit ma nöd ails, bald s'nöd aus der Art schlàgn’!—
Es mar aamàl a presshafts Leut und san schwari Zaiden,
Graifan s' am aa, ma fint töös pai artlinga rachtschàffan Kinern ...

You can feel, as you listen to the lines, their soothing, quieting influence.

If you want to lead straight over to the spiritual, if you want to take your hearers away from the physical and lead them up to where they can move in the realm of the spirit, then you will have to use the iambic metre, but still forming the speaking gently, quietly.

And this is one of the reasons that prompted Goethe, for example, to write his dramas in iambics, one of the reasons also why our Mystery Plays have been written largely in iambic verse. A sensitive perception for such things will have to live within us, if we want to have again true schools of dramatic art. In such schools it must be known that speech is alive, that gesture is alive, that everything that happens on the stage is alive and active and sends its influence out far and wide.

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or, using English letter:

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• 1. Pronounce like our word ‘lair’, but letting the r vibrate.
• 2. Schief (pronounced like our word’ sheaf’) is the word used to describe the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• 3. It's the tone that makes the music.
• 4. Sing, O immortal soul, the redemption of sinful mankind!

My dear Friends,

The studies we have been pursuing together in these past days have led us to see that two things are necessary if we want to be artists on the stage. In the first place, we must be ready and willing to undertake an intensive study of the elements of the arts of speech and gesture—those first elements of which we have seen that they are rooted and sustained in the life of the spirit. And then secondly, we must give to dramatic art its right place in the whole compass of our life, and in so doing implant in our hearts a mood that is permeated by spirit and never deviates from the paths of spirituality. If we can fulfil these two things required of us, then we shall be able to take our part as actors in the life of mankind in the way that an artist should who is sustained and upheld by the spirit. For such an artist should have it in his power, by means of all that he is and does, to help bring the artistic into that leading role in civilisation to which it is called, and for lack of which civilisation must inevitably wither and perish.

Such was, I know, the earnest aspiration that prompted a number of you to ask for this course of lectures. And we shall need to carry the same earnestness into our further study, as we go on now to consider, for example, how the human form is a revelation of the great world. Approaching the theme from the standpoint of the art of the stage, we shall have to find how in the form and figure of man, taken in its most comprehensive sense, the universe is revealed—significantly, intensively revealed. And the perceptions that light up within us through thus beholding man as a revelation of the universe, will guide us in linking up again the natural and elemental with the divine and spiritual.

We will accordingly begin our lecture today with a consideration once again of the question : How can we see in the forming of word and of sound a revelation of the form and figure of man? If we think of ‘speaking’ man, man revealing himself in speech, then the first part of his form that calls for notice is his lips. It is, to begin with, the lips that do the revealing.

Disregarding altogether for the moment the grouping of the consonants into impact sounds, breath sounds, wave sounds and vibrant sounds, we find that the sounds which are brought to expression by means of the lips are m, b, p. These sounds are revelations that are made entirely by the formative activity of the lips; both lips are engaged.

1. Both lips engaged : m b p

If we try to utter any other sound than these with the lips, we not only interfere with the right forming of speech, we do injury to our organism. And if on the other hand we speak m, b or p without the complete instinctive consciousness that here the lips are the specific agents, then again we harm both our speaking and our organism.

A second activity reveals itself when we begin to look a little way in from the lips—a co-operation, namely, of lower lip with upper teeth. In the muscles of the lower lip we have an intense concentration of our karma, of that karma that is so mysteriously present within us all the time. The forces that work and weave throughout the limbs go streaming through the muscles of the lower lip in a wonderful variety of movement; we may even say that the whole human being, with the exception of the organisation of the head, comes to expression in the activity of the lower lip.

In comparison with those of the lower, the muscles of the upper lip are inactive. Their part is rather to provide opportunity for what is contained in the head organisation to find its way into the muscular system. And whilst the lower lip is positively no less than a complete expression of man as limb-man, all that can be said of the upper lip is that it supplies man in its movement with a means of expression for what is contained in the utterance of m, b and p.

But now, through this co-operation of lower lip and upper teeth we can bring to expression what comes more from the entire man. The upper teeth, like the upper lip, bring the head organisation to expression, and being more at rest and circumscribed, are able to do so even better. In the upper teeth we have a concentration, a consolidation of all that man is ready and willing to receive of the secrets of the universe, those secrets that crave to be taken hold of in this way, to be established and consolidated in man's being. There in the upper teeth they come to rest. And when we let lower lip and upper teeth work together in the right way in f, v (f) and w (v),¹ then what has been received by us from the whole sum of world secrets and is now wanting to come to expression finds that expression.

2. Lower lip and upper teeth: f v w

The South Germans are almost unable to say w; they pronounce it like u and e run together, giving it the character of a vowel. W properly spoken arises from the lower lip meeting the upper teeth in a kind of wavelike movement, whereas in v the lower lip merely closes up to them without this wavelike movement. In f the lower lip pushes with all its force on to the upper teeth.

A further stage is reached when the two rows of teeth work together. This means that the lower and upper organisations of man, the organisations of head and of limbs, are held in balance. The world has, so to speak, been captured by man, he has it there within him; and now he on his part wants to send forth his own being into the world without. This is how it is when we attain to a right interworking of upper and lower teeth in speaking the sounds s, c (ts), z (ts).²

3. Upper and lower teeth working together : s c z

In these sounds, the teeth alone are concerned.

Entering now still farther into man, we come to his inner life, to where his life of feeling seeks to express itself, his life of soul; we have therefore also to go farther back in his bodily being. We come then to the tongue; and we have first the revelation that can come about through tongue and upper teeth working together. Whilst what man has become by virtue of all that he has received from the world, reveals itself in the interplay of lower lip and upper teeth, what man is by virtue of the fact that he has a soul, comes to revelation in the interplay between soul and head—that is, between tongue and upper teeth.

Here, therefore, the tongue begins to work—and behind the upper teeth. Please take special note of the word behind. This gives rise to the sounds: l, n, d, t.

4. Tongue works behind the upper teeth: l n d t

If we are to succeed in producing in our pupils healthy and beautiful speaking, it will be important to arrange in our dramatic school for the practice of exercises expressly designed to avoid lisping. In lisping, the tongue ventures too far forward, pushing itself between the teeth. The students must succeed in having the tongue so completely under control, that the cardinal maxim of all speaking is consciously carried out, namely, that the tongue shall never be allowed to overstep the boundary set by the two rows of teeth.³ During the whole time of speaking, the tongue must stay behind this boundary. When it is allowed to come out beyond the teeth, it is as though the soul were wanting to come forth and expose itself, without body, to immediate contact with Nature.

A person who lisps should accordingly be given the following exercise, and one should begin it with him as young as possible. Get him to practise saying n l d, repeating each sound three times, and each time resolutely pressing the tongue on to the back of the upper teeth: n n n, l l l, d d d. To continue uttering the sounds in this way, one after the other, is difficult, but that is how they should be practised. It is a fatiguing exercise; it may well leave the pupil feeling as though he were seized with cramp. But let me tell you how the first man to draw attention to this exercise used to encourage his patients. He would remind them of the lieutenant who was in the habit of saying to his raw recruits: ‘Of course it is difficult; if a thing isn't difficult, you don't have to learn it!’

The fifth thing we need to consider lies still farther back in the mouth. We have to learn to be fully conscious of the part played in speaking by the root of the tongue. That is then the fifth, the root of the tongue. We shall here have to practise the sounds g, k, r⁴, j⁵, qu (kv), speaking them as far back in the mouth as possible, and consciously feeling, as we utter them, the root of the tongue.

5. Root of the tongue: g k r j qu

It is these sounds—and more especially g, k, r—sounds where we have to take pains to be conscious all the time of the root of the tongue, that must bear the blame for stuttering. Stuttering arises when the instinctive feeling of the proper way to say g, k, r is lacking. We will go into this matter a little further presently, but directly you notice signs of stuttering in a pupil, you will have to take him with g k r and try to get him to speak these sounds to perfection. For r you can administer a physical help. Instead of expecting your pupil to produce r right away by his own inner effort, prepare him beforehand by letting him gargle water sweetened with sugar. Yes, as you see, whenever there is something of this kind that can help a pupil, something quite external, I have no hesitation in calling your attention to it. And for a right speaking of the sound r, gargling with sweetened water can prove very helpful. The sweet water must, however, be properly and thoroughly gargled. Particularly with children the gargling can have excellent results.

And now I want to pass on to something else that should be familiar to everyone who wants to speak properly, and which an intending actor will certainly need to master thoroughly.

I have, as you know, repeatedly pointed out that right speaking is not to be attained by physiological exercises, but that we have to learn it from the speech organism itself. We have in these lectures taken cognisance of many things that can be learned from the speech organism, and we have added to them today. We have seen that from m, b, p we learn the right co-operation of the lips, that from v, w we learn how to use rightly together lower lip and upper teeth, and from s, c, z the two rows of teeth. We have seen also how the tongue must always remain behind the teeth in l, n, d, t and lastly how we are to manipulate the root of the tongue in g, k, r, j, qu.

The sounds themselves are our teachers. It is only a matter of our knowing how to engage their help. If we have once understood this, then that will mean that all the several parts of our organism of throat and mouth have been received as pupils in the school of the sounds. The sounds are verily the Gods from whom we are to learn how to form our speaking.

But now, as I was saying, there is yet another matter to which we must give our attention. It concerns the breathing, and is the one item of guidance to be salvaged from all the tangled mass of instructions given in schools of speech training today. In speaking, we should use up, steadily and quietly, all our available breath. If, while we are speaking, we take a fresh breath before the inbreathed air we have in the lungs is exhausted, then our speaking will invariably be poor and feeble.

We are, as it were, in possession of the secret of well- formed speech when we know that good speaking depends upon the use to the full of the air that we have within us. We must accordingly accustom ourselves to the practice of exercises, once more derived from speech itself, where we have, to begin with, to take a deep full breath.

What does it imply, to take a deep full breath? It means that the diaphragm is pressed down as far as it can be without injury to health. You must be able to feel in the region of the diaphragm that the inbreathing is complete. You will, as teacher, need to lay your hand on your pupil in the region of the diaphragm in order to demonstrate to him the expansion that has to take place there, the change that must necessarily accompany a thorough inbreathing.

Then you will get your pupil to hold this inbreathed air and continue speaking with it until all the air he took in has been breathed out again. It must never happen that he stops to take breath so long as there is still any inbreathed air left in his lungs. It should indeed become for the pupil entirely a matter of instinct: never to pause for breath until the inbreathed air is exhausted.

Having first taken a deep breath and become conscious of what happens in the region of the diaphragm as he in-breathes, conscious too of the whole gradual change that takes place there until the inbreathed air is completely exhausted (for this preparatory stage the sound a can serve), the student may then proceed to the following exercise.

First a sequence of vowels, spoken slowly so that they occupy the time of a complete out-breathing. Let him say a e u, and continue with these sounds until he needs to take a fresh breath. Then the same with consonants. Let him keep on with k l s f m for the whole period of an out-breathing. This exercise, which has for its ultimate aim the full use of the in-taken breath before any more air is inbreathed, provides us also with a remedy, in fact the only right and healthy remedy, for stuttering. The reason why rhythmic exercises can prove so remarkably helpful for stuttering is that a good rhythm necessarily demands right breathing. One is obliged to breathe properly if one has to say:

‘Und es wallet and woget and brauset and zischt (take breath)
Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt.⁶

It is quite possible to hold one's breath throughout each line; in fact, one can hardly help doing so. And that is what you will have to achieve with your stutterer. He must not take breath until the inbreathed air is used up. For his stuttering is due to the fact that an anxiety which makes him gasp for air has become in him organic. What he needs is something that can lure him away from this anxious fear that makes him strain to catch his breath; and we shall exactly meet that need if, when he has begun to stutter, we get him to sing, or to say some poetry. Fear and anxiety are connected also with anger, and you know how an angry

You probably know the story of the apothecary's assistant who was inclined to stutter whenever he was worried or anxious. The apothecary was having tea in a room upstairs with some friends. The assistant burst into the room and all he could say was: Die Apo-, die Apothe-, Apothe-, Apothe- ... The k was there in his way, he couldn't get past it. The apothecary, seeing the poor fellow pale with fear, realised that it was imperative to find out what was the matter. So he said to the assistant: ‘Sing it, man!’ And the man sang quite perfectly: ‘Die Apotheke brennt!’ (The shop is on fire!) Yes, he sang the information without any difficulty. And there was not a moment to be lost; the fire was raging in the cellar quite furiously. It was the singing that did it!

Constant steady practice of exercises can have permanent results; only, the exercises have to be done with the necessary inner energy. When unconsciousness intervenes, the stuttering, since it has become organic, is liable to recur. Let me tell you of a case that I found particularly interesting. A friend of mine who was a poet suffered from a stutter.⁷ He overcame his disability to the point of being able to read aloud his own poems that were in long lines of verse. He would read rhythmically and without the least sign of difficulty; no one listening would have any suspicion that he was a stutterer. My friend was, however, a man who was easily excited and upset, and it would frequently happen that in ordinary conversation his stuttering would show itself again. (He was one who never had the patience to undertake exercises.) One day he was asked by a man, who was, to say the least, not very tactful: ‘Do you always stutter like this?' His reply was: ‘N-n-n-not unless I'm speaking to someone I just can't bear!’

A defect in speaking can thus locate itself in the organs, can become organic. In the case of lisping, we saw that there is a disability, when speaking l, n, d, t, to get tongue and upper teeth to co-operate as they should; the trouble in stuttering and stammering is that the root of the tongue is not under proper control. For it is the root of the tongue that reacts at once to disorder in the breathing A stutterer will therefore do well, as we said, to take g, k and r for his teachers—the r a little sweetened with sweet water.

In the sounds of speech live Divine Beings; and we must approach these Beings with devotion, with prayerful devotion. They will then be the very best teachers we could possibly have. All the many rules that are propounded for the management of the breath—apart from the one I have spoken of: Not until I have no air left in my lungs must I draw breath—all the others lead us astray into the sphere of the intellectual. That one rule, however, must become instinctive knowledge for the speaker. Instinctively he should go on using up the inbreathed air as long as he has any left. No other rules are needed for the gymnastics of the breath, but this one is absolutely indispensable. It has to be learned in the way I have described, and should be taught in every properly constituted school for the stage.

What I would have you understand, my dear friends, is that there are dangers attending all artistic activity, and only if we are able to bring to our own art a mood of religious devotion can we escape these dangers. The artist of the stage is especially exposed to them; they can actually assume for him the form of artistic faculties, but faculties that work with demoralising effect. Veneration, religious veneration for the sounds of speech! The words ring strange to us; but we must have courage to receive them and make them our own. For in these divine teachers of ours, in these sounds of speech, a whole world is contained. If we would become true ‘formers of the word’, we must never forget that the word was ‘in the beginning’. Despite all conflicting interpretations, that is what the opening words of the Gospel of St. John mean. ‘In the beginning was the Word’, the Wisdom-filled Word. A mood of devotion should imbue everything that has to do with the word.

But now, wherein lies the danger that threatens the actor, and no less the producer?

Actor and producer are on the stage, or behind it. This means, they are in a completely different world from the world of the auditorium. But the two worlds have to go together, they have to go absolutely hand in hand. It should never for a moment occur to us as possible that this harmonious co-operation should be lacking in any smallest detail. And yet how unlike, how essentially unlike the two worlds are! When you are on and behind the stage, you have there a reality. This reality, when it is shown to the audience, has to be converted into an illusion. But not on the stage—nor behind it; it can't be illusion there. For the audience who are sitting down below in front, it is an illusion—mysterious, terrible, charming, delightful, perhaps even mystical. But for those who are working on or behind the stage, the illusion changes into trivial reality.

I remember how forcibly this was brought home to me once when I was working with a company and we had to stage Maeterlinck's L'Intruse.⁸ An essential feature in this little drama is the gradual approach of sounds that are at first heard only in the distance. These sounds have to make the impression of something that is full of mystery; they are in reality the harbinger of death, they are bringing death to the one who lies ill in the adjoining room. Thus they will, you see, have to be of such a nature as to awaken in the audience a thoroughly mystical and mysterious mood.

But now in order to achieve this end, you will have to make use of quite trivial devices. Somewhere in the wings you will create a noise like the sharpening of a scythe heard at a distance—a noise that is to give the first indication of something rather mystically terrifying that sounds from far away. Then a little later, you will want a noise that sounds nearer. You will perhaps arrange for a key to be turned slowly in its lock by someone who is coming into the house. Just think what trivialities you resort to ! When you are thinking out contrivances of this nature, you are converting the impression you want to make on the audience into the utmost triviality.

I wanted now to provide for a still further enhancement of the mood. Behind the stage, my dear friends, we treat these things as matters of pure technique, and are delightfully indifferent to all the feelings we are hoping to arouse in the spectator who experiences the illusion. And it occurred to me that at the moment when the key had been turned in the lock and someone had entered the house, someone else might start up quickly like this (chair thrown back on to the floor). The action did, in fact, greatly intensify the illusion in the audience. Following on the mysterious sounds already described, it fairly made their hearts stand still with terror.

On the stage, a chair falling down—that was all it was in dry prose; but among the audience it produced an illusion of dithering fear.

It would, you know, be quite wrong for us to put ourselves forward as reformers and express disapproval of devices of this nature. On the contrary, we must certainly use such methods—the more of them the better! Their use requires, however, that our devotion to the spiritual be all the greater. Our hearts must be so full of devotion to the spiritual that we can endure unscathed all the trivial subterfuges that have to be undertaken behind the stage and in the wings.

The actor's inner life of feeling has to undergo change and development, until he is able to approach the whole of his art in a religious mood. Suppose a poet is writing an ode. If he is genuinely absorbed in the mood of the ode, he won't be thinking that his pen doesn't seem to be writing very smoothly. Similarly, on the stage, you should have developed such instinctive devotion to your work that even, let me say, such a simple action as knocking over a chair, you carry out with no other feeling than that you are doing a spiritual deed.

Not until this mood is attained will it be possible for the art of the stage to be filled and pervaded with the spirit that rightly belongs to it. Indeed its whole future depends upon that. And do not imagine the desired mood can be attained by any sentimental exhortations; no, only by dealing with realities. And we are dealing with realities when the sounds of speech in their mysterious runing become for us Gods—Gods who form within us our speaking. This should be the feeling that inspires all we do; it is also the determining sign of true art. It must even go so far, my dear friends, that never for a moment do we cease to be conscious of the fact that the illusion in the audience has to be created by a truth that is spiritually experienced in the souls of both actor and producer. We need to recognise this and take our guidance from it, even though we must admit that the audiences of today do not give us quite the picture that we on the stage would like to have before us.

You will, however, find that if the mood of which I have been speaking prevails on and behind the stage, it will work in imponderable ways upon the audience. The attitude of mind that one would be so glad to find there will develop more quickly under this influence than by any other method. We shall not help its development by drawing up elaborate plans or by making all kinds of promises at the inauguration of some new dramatic school or theatre. The one and only way to evoke a right attitude in the audience is to make sure that the whole of the work undertaken in connection with the stage is brought under the sway of soul and spirit.

To create the conditions for a harmonious co-operation between stage and critics is quite another matter, and infinitely harder of attainment. Many of the difficulties under which dramatic art labours today are, in fact, directly due to the utterly unnatural condition into which criticism has drifted. What goes by the name is not genuine criticism at all. Men like Kerr or Harden⁹ may be very clever, they may even found schools of criticism, but what they write and teach is built up on a purely negative principle. We must not allow ourselves to be misled and imagine that their criticisms have any sort of connection with art. They have none. These men are utterly indifferent to art, and it is important for the actor to realise that what they say has nothing whatever to do with what he, as an artist, intends and undertakes. It is, in fact, his bounden duty to change Kerr into kehr, and ‘aus-kehr-en’ the critics—‘clear the decks’ of them, once and for all. For at the root of all this spurious criticism lies, as I said, a purely negative attitude.

I once had an interesting experience which let me into the secret of the rise of this kind of criticism. For this kind of criticism is no more than a perfectly natural outcome of a style of journalism which this experience of mine enabled me to catch as it were in the moment of its birth. Many years ago I was present at a rather large gathering of people in Berlin, among whom was Levysohn, chief editor at the time of the Berliner Tageblatt. I had some talk with him and in course of conversation we came to speak of Harden. For it cannot be denied that Harden was among the interesting figures of the early nineties of last century, he showed remarkable pluck and confidence in the way he put himself forward. True, if one looked behind the scenes, one was forced to relinquish many illusions about him. But for all that, he was a person of some note, was Harden; and in my talk with Levysohn I drew attention to some of his good points. By way of reply, Levysohn told me the following. ‘When you have a man like Harden,' he said, ‘you've got to understand him. Harden came originally from the provinces, where he had been an actor in a small way. He threw up his job and came to Berlin, hoping to make a living there. I was at that time arranging to start a Monday morning paper, to which the Berliner Tageblatt partly owes its origin. I wanted to make a really good thing of it. It was the first of its kind in Berlin, and I was determined that people should buy it up eagerly like hot cakes. A plan occurred to me which I myself thought very wily, and it is on account of this plan of mine that I claim credit for starting Harden off in the good style of writing that he has. Yes, Harden has me to thank for it. I engaged some young fellows who were hanging about, waiting for jobs, fellows who, I reckoned, had a bit of talent, though not much. You can get people to do anything if you only set about it in the right way!’ ... There you have the cynicism of a chief editor in the eighties and nineties of last century! Harden was of course one of the young men who were chosen. Levysohn told them: ‘Now look, you will get so and so many marks per month. And all you have to do is to sit all day long in a coffee house and read the papers. One of you will undertake to read all the political articles; another will study the articles dealing with art—or rather, one the articles on painting and another those on drama. Then you have only to sit down on Sunday afternoon and each one of you write an article that is different from those he has been reading all through the week.' ... This suited Harden admirably. ‘Every week,' said Levysohn, ‘he would bring me his article, and each time it was entirely different from my of the articles he had read during the week. And that is ;till Harden's art. There you have the secret of his Zukunft. So I, you see, am responsible,' said Levysohn in conclusion, ‘for Harden's becoming such a good journalist.'

Yes, when you look behind the scenes of this stage—for journalism is also a stage !—you are in for a bit of disillusionment there too. And it will be a harder matter to cure the reading public than to cure the public you have before you in the theatre. The cure cannot indeed ever come about until people wake up to see how slight a connection there is between a criticism that has a merely negative foundation and the ideals we are called upon to cherish for art.

To-morrow I would like to say more on this in a wider connection and consider with you what follows for the actor and his art from his relations with the public and with the critics; and there we shall have to bring this course of lectures to a close.

1. Both lips: m b p
2. Lower lip and upper teeth: f v w
3. Upper and lower teeth: s c z
4. Tongue works behind the upper teeth: l n d t
5. Root of the tongue: g k r j qu

or, using English letters:

1. Both lips: m b p
2. Lower lip and upper teeth: f v
3. Upper and lower teeth: s (‘easy’ or ‘say’) is
4. Tongue works behind upper teeth: l n d t
5. Root of the tongue: g k r (guttural) y (consonantal) kv.

• 1. We have here only two distinct sounds, the difference between f and v consisting simply in the force with which the sound is uttered (see next paragraph).
• 2. The s may be voiced or unvoiced (as in ‘easy’ or as in’ say’). The letter c is rarely met with in modern German
• 3. A forcible reminder that the lectures refer to the German language!
• 4. The German guttural r, a sound which does not occur in English.
• 5. Like our ‘y’ in ‘yacht’, but more consonantal.
• 6. For similar rhythm in English, the opening lines of The Burial of Sir John Moore by Wolfe may be suggested:
  ‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
  As his corse to the rampart we hurried.’
• 7. p. 386. This was Ludwig Jacobowski. A beautiful account of the poet and of his work in raany fields of cultural activity will be found in Rudolf Steiner's The Course of My Life, pp. 290-2.
• 8. Reference to this performance and to the Introductory Address given by Rudolf Steiner will be found in Chapter XXV of The Course of My Life, where he teils of the part he took for some years in the production of plays, in a theatre in Berlin which would seem to correspond to our Repertory Theatres.
• 9. Alfred Kerr was dramatic critic for the Berliner Tageblatt. His destructive and impertinent style won him many followers. Maximilian Harden was a celebrated political journalist. Reference may be mode here to Rudolf Steiner's own dramatic criticisms and reviews that appeared in various magazines during the years from 1889 to 1900. Many of these have been reprinted in the Frühwerk (collections of his earlier literary work); see especially Vol. XI entitled Theater, Schauspiel und Schauspielkunst.

My dear Friends,

I would like today to say something of how explanations such as I was giving you yesterday, where we saw once more how the art of the forming of speech has to be learned from speech itself, how such explanations (or instructions, if you want to call them so) are to be received, how they are then to be taken over into your practical work.

Now it is a fact that the whole system of speech sounds—if I may designate it with such a pedantic term—the whole system of speech sounds with its manifold gradations in the various languages, expresses how the activities which take their start from the speech organs are related to the entire human organism. You have to picture it in the following way.

We may employ for the purpose a somewhat rough classification of the sounds of speech. Following the lines of yesterday's lecture, we can give our attention, to begin with, to the sounds that originate more or less in the region of the palate. If we consider all that takes place when a speech sound comes to birth in this region, and have the eye to follow it up as it takes its way right through man, then for the sounds that originate in the palate—for throat sounds, too, but more especially for palatal—we find that we can tell from a man's walk whether he utters these sounds resolutely or indolently, whether in fact, he enters fully or not into the speaking of them. This means that when we produce a speech sound by means of the palate, the speaking goes right through us down to our heels and toes; in other words, a palatal sound has connection with the entire human organism. As for the sounds in which the tongue participates, they are especially connected with that part of the human being which comprises first the head as far down as the upper lip (not including the lower lip) and then goes back and extends towards the spine—the region of the back, generally. And when we come to sounds that are uttered with the help of lips and teeth, we find that these are more connected with the breast and, generally speaking, the front parts of the body. So that really the whole man is contained in his speech. We can quite well call speech the creator of the form of man in these three directions.

This being so, it follows that if, for instance, you want to practise stage-walking, you cannot do better than associate it with the speaking of palatal sounds. For speech can help to give ‘form’ to the whole of your acting, even to your very way of walking on the stage.

Stage-walking, as you know very well, has to be different from our usual walking if it is to give the appearance of being true to life. If you were to walk on the stage as you do ordinarily, it could not possibly look like real life. Correct stage-walking is therefore again an end that can be attained best of all by means of speech. It is, however, not possible simply to lay down rules for it, you have to work it out for yourself in practice.

It will, I think, be clear from all this that when I describe the speech sounds as our teachers, you are not to infer that what we learn from them is of value for those particular sounds alone. I am not advising that you should practise merely the utterance of the individual sounds of the alphabet (they will of course all come in the exercises); my intention is to help you find your way altogether to a right and beautiful and smooth-flowing manner of speaking. What you learn, for instance, from the throat sounds will go over into the sounds made with lips or with tongue, and gradually as a result of practising the various exercises, the word will begin to flow in your soul.

There is thus no question of an actor having to watch for a d or a g or a k in order to speak them in a particular way. Rather do I mean that as you begin to do such exercises as I have given, speech becomes for you your teacher, your tutor in the art of acting. It will even render your body more supple. If the exercises are systematically carried out in the way I have explained, the plastic forms of your bodily organs will become more pliant, and your organs on this account be fitter instruments for your art.

This is why I come back again and again to the need of a school of training for dramatic art where exercises of this kind are taught and practised. And it is just through the practice of such exercises that the right mood of approach can be attained. You will remember I was telling you yesterday how all-important is this mood of approach; indeed, without it we can never have art on the stage.

For consider how it is with the spectator in the audience. What does he bring with him 9 He has never had explicitly present to his consciousness all that lives in the single sounds of speech. The meaning conveyed in what is spoken—that is all he is cognisant of. Of the significance of sounds he knows nothing; he knows only what the words hold in the way of ideas. When therefore the actor enters deeply into the feeling of the sounds, this means that an abyss opens between him and the audience. For the actor on his side of the abyss, the play is not merely what it is for the audience; it becomes for him a veritable sacrificial rite, and the sacrifice he offers up enables the spiritual to be carried into the world of the physical.

This will not, however, be so unless the actor has been able so completely to transform his mood of soul that it has come right away from looking merely at the ‘ideal’ significance of words, and vibrates instead in a delicate sensitiveness to all that is contained in their sounds. And it is possible for the actor gradually to progress so far with his experience of individual sounds that syllables also begin to be full of significance for him. I will give you an example to show you what I mean, for this is an important point—that syllables should carry their full significance for the actor.

Take the word betrüblich (distressing, most unfortunate). We use the word in the easy way words are used nowadays. We are faced with some situation in life and call it ‘betrüblich’, without having any particular experience of the word as such. We must not rest content with this. We must go further and experience the feelings and inner perceptions that are inherent in the sounds and that enter then into the syllables, and by way of the syllables into the word.

Let us begin with the last syllable -lich. We have here first of all the wave sound 1. We feel there a flowing, as of surging waves. And then we have ch. In ch we ‘form’ the flow of the waves, we arrest it in a form. The i signifies merely that we want to draw attention to the form that is arising there. Going through it sound by sound in this way, we come to feel that in lich we have the same as we generally experience in the word gleich.¹ In the words menschengleich (man-like) and löwengleich (lion-like) we have to use still the whole word gleich, since the language has here not reached the stage of changing the gleich into lich (for lich is of course merely a metamorphosis of gleich). If the word löwengleich, for example, had already been thoroughly absorbed into the stream of speech, if it had through constant use become an integral member of the language, it would today be no longer löwengleich but löwenlich. Similarly, menschengleich would by now have become menschenlich. For in lich we have simply the expression of the fact that the movement is here understood which is expressive of likeness.

Say, for example, you let the feeling of lich arise in you while you are stroking a velvet cushion. Your hand moves gently over the soft surface, feeling in this way the form of the cushion and receiving the impression into your very being. Then maybe you will say to yourself: I know someone whose character gives me the same experience as I have when I stroke this cushion.

Going on now to trüb (dull, cloudy), we do not perhaps at once sense trüb in betrüblich, and yet the word carries that meaning; the soul that finds a situation betrüblich is overcast, as though by a cloud. We must succeed in making contact with what is directly present in the sounds; that will help us very much to come to a better understanding of what we have to say or speak. That the trüb has an ü in it, we can well appreciate from the feeling that we associated with that sound when we were considering the circle of the vowels. But now what is the significance in general of an umlaut?

An umlaut always indicates dispersal. A single thing or a few become many. We say Bruder (brother). As long as there is only one brother under consideration, we can quite properly denote him as one; if there are more, our attention is diverted from the one and we speak of Brüder (brothers, brethren). Dialects retain the more original forms of language, and in them you will always find the umlaut for the plural, signifying that the application of the word is dispersed. We have therefore in trüb a syllable that can be felt; it suggests that dispersal of water, which gives rise to Trübe (mist) And when you go on to draw the comparison with the soul, and find that your word expresses also how the soul is like the mist, then you will be able to ‘taste’ the word in all its richness of meaning.

For the be- you have only to look round for some analogous words. Think of the word denken (to think) and put be- in front of it. Denken is thinking in general; but when you say you bedenken, you mean you are directing your thinking to a particular point or object.² And a turning of the thinking to something that makes the soul trüb is just what betrüblich expresses.

I have not taken you through this study of a word with the intention that you should proceed to analyse the whole text of some drama on the same plan. What I am concerned for is not that at all, but that during an actor's training considerable time should be devoted to intensive study of the inner substance of words, so that he may become familiar with them in all their concrete reality. If I say: Es ist betrüblich für mich, a suggestion is implied that a cloud is descending upon my soul. And if I am able, whilst saying Es ist betrüblich für mich, to let the feeling of this more concrete paraphrase of the words be present in my soul, then my words will receive the right tone, they will be spoken from the heart. I must warn you, however, that this will not be so if you determine in an arbitrary manner where you will give point or emphasis, but only if you take your guidance from the character of the speech itself.

For speech, my dear friends, in the full swing of its manifold movements, can truly be said to bring to expression in sound and in tone the whole scale of man's sensibilities. The speech organism in its entirety—what is it but man in all the fulness of feeling of his life of soul! You may even go further and call it a host of Divine Beings in all the fulness of feeling of their life of soul. And as we find our way into this deeper understanding of it, speech becomes increasingly objective for us, until at length we have it there before us like a kind of tableau—we can go up and look at it.

And this brings me to something I want particularly to say to you; it was actually the reason why I was anxious to extend this course for one more day. It sounds simple enough when I put it into words, but the recognition of it will help you to give a right orientation to your work.

Man's speaking proceeds from his throat and mouth. He knows not how or why; the mechanism for speech is situated in the mouth, and that is all. There is simply no understanding in modern times of all that has to come into consideration for the artistic forming of speech.

The same lack of perception can be remarked in an altogether different sphere of human activity. When I was a young man, some twenty-four or twenty-five years old, I had occasion to observe how eager people were at that time to take lessons from those who advertised themselves as teachers of handwriting. Hitherto, no special value had been attached to a distinctive handwriting—anyway not in commercial life. Suddenly all that changed. (This was before the days of typewriters; everything had to be written out by hand) The ambition to acquire a beautiful handwriting spread like an infectious complaint. And one became acquainted with those methods that set out to teach writing by conscious development of the mechanism of the hand. There were various methods, but all had for their aim the making supple of hand and arm; for it was accepted as a matter of course that one writes out of the mechanism of hand and arm. In reality it is not so at all, as anyone may prove to his own satisfaction if he will take the trouble to fix a pencil between his big toe and the next, and proceed to write with his foot. He will find he can manage to do it. For it is not the hand that writes; writing does not come about through the mechanism of the hand The mechanism of the hand is set going by the whole man. Try writing with your foot; it will cost you some effort, but you will succeed. And the best of it is, anyone who takes the trouble to write with his foot is rewarded with a wonderful experience. He begins to feel his whole body, and that is a tremendous gain for the soul.

Thus, behind all this instruction in writing that became so popular was, you see, the completely false notion that we should learn to write with our hand and arm, whereas the truth is we should learn to write with our eyes. In order to write well, we want to develop a sensitive perception for the forms of the letters—veritably beholding them in the spirit and then copying them; not constructing them with the mechanism of the hand, but seeing them there before us in spirit and then drawing them in imitation.

If we understand this, we shall perhaps be more ready to understand that whereas in the ordinary way, when he wants to speak, man simply makes use of his instrument of speech, the actor has first to acquire what I might call an intimate kind of hearing that does not hear, an ear that hears silent speech. He must be able to hold the word in his soul, in his spirit, holding it there in its sequence of sounds, hearing in silence whole passages, whole monologues, dialogues, and so forth. In effect, speech has to become for him so objective that when he speaks, his speaking proceeds from what he hears with his soul.

It is not enough for a poet to have in his head the meaning and purport of a poem; the whole of the artistically formed speech must be present to him. Most of the scenes in my Mystery Plays have been first heard and then written. I have not begun with an idea and looked for words to express it; I have simply listened and written down what I heard. And the speaking of the actor on the stage should really come about in the same way; he should first hear, and then let the speaking proceed from the hearing. This will mean that he comes naturally into a true feeling for sound and syllable, and above all is made sensible of the need to live in the words. Furthermore, his whole understanding of life will by this experience be lifted on to a spiritual level, and he will develop a quick and ready sense for what is genuine artistic creation.

We have here come again upon one of the truths concerning dramatic art which do not easily meet with acceptance all at once. An actor who has made such a deep study of speech that he has as it were a second self beside him to whom he is listening will find that the meaning and purport of the drama in which he is taking part lights up within him; he perceives it, instinctively. That is, if it is a good drama. For the good poet—and also the good translator—has a certain feeling all the time for how the words spoken by the different characters ought to sound to the hearers; if therefore the actor hears what he has to speak (we will imagine, for example, he is taking the part of Faust), if he has come to the point of hearing the part in his soul before speaking it, he will much more quickly grasp its inner meaning. And so for an actor who wants to have an artistic understanding of the play and of his own part in it, the advice is once again to take the formed speech for his starting-point.

I said an actor should have an artistic understanding of his part, an understanding, that is, that arises from ‘beholding’ the part. This is something very different from a conceptual understanding of it. One meets at times with grotesque instances of the disparity between the two. I was once present at a delightful social gathering, from which one could learn a great deal. You will remember, we were speaking the other day of Alexander Strakosch. I told you how with all his failings he was, in his own way, a good reciter; as stage reciter he had, in fact, considerable influence. He was not a good producer, and he was no actor; latterly he was too fond of mannerisms, especially on the stage. But in one thing Strakosch was really skilful. He was able, while forming his speech, to enter right into the inner experience of it. He was on the stage of the Burgtheater in Vienna; Laube knew well what he was worth to him. Strakosch would listen to his part and let the character build itself up before him as he listened.

On the occasion in question, several actors were present who had just been performing Hamlet; and what was particularly significant, there were present also university professors and other men of scholarship. The evening was devoted to a discussion on Shakespeare, and all these latter had no doubt made a profound study of his work. Strakosch was also there. We had all of us been at the performance and now we began to listen to the various interpretations of the play that were put forward by these scholarly gentlemen. The interpretations differed somewhat, but each speaker set out to prove the absolute validity of his own, and every one of them spoke at great length.

The actors kept silence, particularly the actor who had played Hamlet. He had nothing to say. He could not, he said, expound or elucidate Hamlet; he had played him

I was interested to see if we could not elicit at least one expression of opinion from the stage, and I said to Strakosch: ‘Tell us now, how do you understand Hamlet?’ ‘Very inwardly!’ That was all he would say. He had heard what Hamlet says, had formed his speaking quite wonderfully to correspond, but could say nothing about the part except that it was deep down within him—the fact being that he had hardly had time to get beyond the hearing of it, no time to develop a thought-out interpretation.

And it is quite true that only when there is this inner hearing of the soul can we know what it means to witness the creation of a part, to see it being created by the artist on the stage. That gives him the intuition that is needed for this.

The creation of a part implies nothing less than that the actor is able to place his whole human being right outside of himself, so that he can perceive it there beside him. And then this self of his that is outside him changes into the character of the role he is playing. For if the actor is an individuality, if he has a true inner instinct for his work, we shall always allow him to form his part in his own way, just as the pianist is after all allowed to play in his own way. We shall also find that the audience will be far more ready to follow with understanding what they see on the stage if the actor, instead of making an intellectual study of his part—poring over the content with deep concentration of thought—first forms it in his soul, lets it take shape there, and then having done so can hear just how he is to form it outwardly, by means of his own person on the stage.

Then we shall not be troubled any more with those precise rulings of how a part is to be played, that are so dear to the hearts of dry-as-dust scholars; instead, we shall have the possibility of many different interpretations of a part, for each one of which good grounds can be adduced. But where an interpretation is justified, the ground for its justification is that the actor hears how to form the part.

I would like at this point to give you a demonstration of what widely different ideas can exist concerning one and the same character in a play. I might show you, for instance, how some actor who has, let us say, a rather intellectual conception of Hamlet will play the part—emphasising the fundamental melancholy of Hamlet's character. As a matter of fact, for one who has genuine knowledge of the human soul it will be impossible to play the part as a thorough melancholic; for Hamlet himself draws attention to his melancholy, and a real melancholic does not do that! Admittedly, however, if we are considering Hamlet from an intellectual point of view, it is possible to regard him as a melancholic. The famous Robert, who was a superb classical actor, held this view. We can then play Hamlet walking across the stage engaged in deep contemplation. We shall, however, often come to moments in the play where we shall find it hard to understand Hamlet if we conceive of him in this way and are obliged to think of him as speaking always with a rather heavy, full-toned voice. There are undoubtedly passages where we can do this—and the German translations are for such passages almost as good as, and often better than, the English original!—but there are other passages where it is out of the question, passages where, if we are determined to be consistent and regard Hamlet all through the play as a profound melancholic, we shall find it impossible to speak the words so that they flow rightly for the listener. And whenever I call to mind performances where Robert took the part of Hamlet, I always find that whereas in certain of the monologues his really excellent speaking was notably in place, it was not so where Hamlet becomes ironical. These passages the actor really cannot speak as a melancholic. And I must admit that it used to come each time as a terrible shock to me when, after the famous monologues which were quite wonderfully rendered by Robert, one had to hear in the very same tone the words: ‘Get thee to a nunnery!’ That doesn't do at all. And there are many other traditional renderings of Hamlet that fall to the ground in a similar way. I would therefore like to suggest yet another possible approach, one where in order to let Hamlet reveal his character in his own way through his speaking, we try to understand him in the situation of the moment. I shall not ‘speak’ the passages, but merely recall them to you, pointing them purposely in a rather exaggerated way to make my meaning clear.

Let us take the moment when Hamlet has got ready the play that is to unmask the king. We have to think of him as full of expectation as to the effect the play will have; and it is really quite difficult to imagine that the Hamlet who has arranged all this should at that moment suddenly change into a profound philosopher. Why ever should he all at once, without rhyme or reason, turn philosopher! As I have said, I am not out to find fault with a particular interpretation of Hamlet, not at all. I want only to suggest that good grounds can also be found for an altogether different interpretation from the one that weighs down the famous monologue ‘To be or not to be’ with an overload of deep contemplation and melancholy. It is quite possible to picture the situation in the following way.

Hamlet comes on to the stage—entering from the direction determined by the producer. Whilst he is still walking, and without his making beforehand any of those slow gestures that denote deep thought, an idea suddenly strikes him.³

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.

And now at this point the Hamlet we know so well—the unstable, the wavering—begins to show himself. In the lines that I have read Hamlet was still speaking entirely out of the thought that had flashed into his mind Now he stands there in his true character, for all at once he remembers that sleep is not mere nothingness, it may involve something else.

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;

Now he changes again, becomes more animated, even passionate—not contemplative.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns,

These last words show clearly that Hamlet cannot possibly be pondering deeply as he speaks them. For what would he certainly not say if he weighed his words? He would not say:

The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns.

Has not the elder Hamlet but just returned thence? We should be able to see that words like this can only proceed from that half-worked out idea that had flashed upon him and that speaks in terms of life's memories and is not the fruit of profound philosophising.

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. Soft you now!

And now he can go on to speak of the ‘fair Ophelia’ without the words jarring on us.

Let me say again, I have no intention to pull to pieces some other interpretation that has been rather generally accepted. I want only to point out that it will not do to be so fond of the picture of a deeply reflective Hamlet as to allow oneself to speak out of that mood a monologue that reveals disorder and perplexity in Hamlet's thinking, and that certainly does not spring from philosophical depths. We need, my dear friends, to provide ourselves with a rich and ample background if our acting is to come before the world as art.

I had occasion yesterday to call your attention to the lack of readiness on the part of our present-day critics to discern distinctions of this kind. The fact is, as soon as we begin to practise any art, a sense of shame comes over us if before we have judged it from outside; for we realise that one should only ever speak about an art when one can do something in it oneself. That is a right and true feeling. A person who has never handled a paint brush cannot possibly know why this or that is painted in such and such a way. No more can anyone who does not act himself judge of acting—unless he be able by means of spiritual initiation to transplant himself, as it were, into each individual in turn and then speak, not out of himself but out of these other human beings. The critic who is only a critic and has behind him no stage experience of his own is really no more than a caricature. We must have the courage to acknowledge that this is so.

The only kind of criticism that deserves to be respected is that which follows in the footsteps of Lessing and criticises positively, with intention to provide that when a work of art appears before the public it shall meet with understanding. When criticism has this end in view and does really help the general public to understand one or another work of art, it has its justification. But when the critic wants simply to lay it down that some work of art is good or bad, then his criticism can be justified only if he has himself had professional experience in that art and has moreover given signs of good ability in it. I find myself compelled to add this warning for the reason that the work of the stage will only be able to hold its own in the face of criticism if it can be stiff-necked and not allow itself to be swayed this way and that by the critics. For then we can hope to see developing on the stage a certain spirit of independence; and that will mean that the actor will at length be able to take his own right share in the mission for civilisation that the drama is called upon to fulfil.

I have tried, my dear friends, to give you in this course of lectures some indications of how necessary it is above all that first spirit, and then life, shall be restored to the drama of today. Naturally it has not been possible to give more than suggestions. But I have endeavoured to put these before you in such a way that if, for example, they are worked out in a dramatic school that is constituted on the lines I have described, then good results can follow. The establishment of such a school and the application of my suggestions in the work of the school as well as in rehearsals and so on, could achieve much even in our own time.

What I have tried to say has in very truth been spoken out of a deep reverence for the art. Dramatic art—and remember, it can only exist if man takes his place on the stage with real devotion, allowing his own being to merge in the being of his part—dramatic art has great tasks to perform; and if it cannot now work, as in times past, with something of the power of ritual, it can still even today have an uplifting influence, so that by its means man is carried up to spiritual heights.

If we are able to see how the whole being of man places himself in word and gesture at the service of this creation of the spirit—for that is what drama is, a creation of the spirit—if we can perceive this, then that is again a path along which we can find our way to the spirit. That much remains to be done before that ideal can be reached, is due to the fact that in these days of materialism when spiritual paths have been neglected by man, the art of the stage has fallen into a helpless condition and shown an increasing readiness to become a mere copy of real life—and as such it can never under any circumstances have an uplifting effect but always under all circumstances, the reverse.

Whilst true drama raises all that takes place on the stage, lifts it up to a higher level, and in so doing brings what is human nearer to the Divine, naturalism attains nothing but the imitation of what is human. And no imitation can ever be complete. Every imitation leaves out something the original still has, and must have in order to enable it to give a one-sided expression, a one-sided revelation of itself.

When we see plays of this nature we are often left with the impression that we have been witnessing an art that is not a human art at all, but an art of monkeys. For there is really something quite monkeyish about this kind of imitation, tending as it does to suggest comparison with all sorts of animals. Some actor, trying hard to be as naturalistic as possible, will behave on the stage as if he were a tiger or other wild beast, and many ladies as if they were cats—which is perhaps easier for them than for a man to be a tiger.

But now this means nothing else than that the mask of an earlier time has changed and become a soul mask. And that, dramatic art cannot tolerate—that the one-time animal mask which was there in order to provide the right setting for the gesture should turn into a mask of the soul. With the growing tendency, however, to a purely naturalistic imitation, we can see it happening.

It is my hope that the few indications I have been able to give in these lectures may form themselves for you into an impulse, leading you right away from naturalism into a genuine spiritual art of the stage. This, my dear friends, was indeed the aim I had in view for this course; and I shall only be able to consider its purpose fulfilled when, through the activity of those who have understood me, the results begin to show themselves to me from the stage.

With that I would like to conclude this course of lectures, of which I can truly say it has been a labour of love, the art of the stage having always been for me an object of love and reverence. I leave it with those of you who have been able to meet my words with understanding, and will take them to heart and work further with them.

At the close of the lecture, words of thanks were spoken to which Dr. Steiner responded, as follows:

Herr Haas-Berkow: In expressing heartfelt thanks for this course of lectures I am confident that I speak on behalf of all those who are here present and especially of those of us who are actors. We feel responsible to cherish in heart and mind what has been given to us here and to work on with it to the very utmost of our powers, that we may eventually become actors in the new understanding of the word. Speaking personally, I desire to place myself and all my work at Dr. Steiner's disposal.

Herr Albert Steffen: In the name of all who love the cosmic words—that is, of all who love poetry, who love art—I would like to thank you, Dr. Steiner, for these unforgettable days. I am, I know, giving expression to what is livingly present in the audience. For, from my seat here in front, I could see, as I listened to your words, the rapt attentiveness on the faces of your hearers; I could see how their eyes shone and how their hearts were set on fire. Many an old rule or habit of work perished in the flames, but out of its ashes rose up like a phoenix a marvellous new sense of freedom.

We artists live in the world of semblance. But we have here been enabled to see that this semblance, this glory, comes from a light that is at the very foundation of all being—comes from the Word. You have said that it is the Word that forms and creates man; surely then the speech sounds must be the apostles, and speech itself have power to form us through the instrumentality of yourself and your honoured collaborator Frau Dr. Steiner. Whenever I see eurhythmy, I always have to think: there is the new Parnassus, the assembly of the Gods, resurrected before our eyes.

All the lecture-courses to which we have been listening these last days form a unity. Not only have you given us the beautiful word; from the medical lectures the healing word made itself felt, and from the group of the priests there worked across to us—on sub-earthly and super-earthly paths—the holy word.⁴

So that the actor has really become now also priest and physician.

But what has been for me the most astounding of all is that Dr. Steiner has come forward himself as a poet—and a poet such as the earth has not seen before. I refer to those evening lectures where he has been expounding to us the destinies of men who have been with us here in real life,Weininger, Strind berg, Solovioff and many more; destinies that did not lead to any complete conquest of what is chaotic in life and dark and evil, but destinies which clearly showed the need for something new to enter the life of humanity. All of us here, had we not been gripped by this new thing, would have gone under. Dr. Steiner has saved us. And what is more, he would save the artist in us, he would make of us artists, poets, actors.

How can we thank you? Only by taking the Word for what it truly is—the sword of Michael—and then, sword in hand, fighting with all our strength for you, Dr. Steiner, and for the holy work you have begun.

Dr. Steiner: My dear friends, let us resolve—each one for himself in his own way—to look upon this course of lectures as a beginning. It will fulfil its purpose if we regard it as a first Act and try to find in work the following Acts that shall expound the matter further. If we work together in this direction, then in many and various spheres of life, above all in the domain of that art that is so dear to our hearts, a seed can be sown now that will, as it grows and develops, meet the needs of the civilisation of the future. There is abundant possibility to do this—in among all the inartistic developments that we see around us, to plant a new seed for the future.

In this sense, let us then regard our study here together as first steps on a path, and see whether these first steps may not point the way to further steps. I am thankful to perceive that you are all of you resolved to look upon these initial steps that we have taken here together as opening the way to further artistic work and development as we go forward on the path of life.

And so now, speaking out of this understanding of what our work here together should mean, I extend to you my heartfelt gratitude that you have shown yourselves ready and willing to take part with me in this quest.

• 1. The suffix -fish corresponds to our suffix -ly (as in manly); and the word and suffix gleich to our word and suffix like (as in warlike).
• 2. Compare our expression ‘to bethink oneself’.
• 3. The passages from Hamlet were read by Dr. Steiner from the German translation by Schlegel and Tieck.
• 4. . These words refer to two courses of lectures that Rudolf Steiner was giving at the same time with this course on Speech and Drama: one for doctors and the priests of the Christian Community on Pastoral Medicine, and the other for the priests on The Apocalypse. The long series of week-end evening lectures on Karma which was begun early in the year was also continued through these weeks, as well as the occasional morning lectures to the Workmen at the Goetheanum, on subjects of their own choosing. A very few days later, Dr. Steiner's lecturing activity came to an end.

My dear Friends,

This evening shall be devoted to analysis of questions which have been sent up by a number of dramatic artists, and the reason why I shall answer them this evening is that our arrangements did not allow any other time for the purpose. That is one reason, the other is that I think I may take for granted that at least something of what I am about to say in regard to these questions will be of interest to all here present. The first question is this: “What is the attitude of the spiritual investigator towards the development of consciousness in dramatic art, and what is the necessary mission in this respect of those connected with the stage and dramatic art in general?”

Much that might perhaps be expected in answer to this question will come out more clearly when taken in connection with later questions. I will ask you therefore to take what I have to say in connection with this question more as a whole. I should like to say first of all that dramatic art, in particular, will certainly have to play a part in every development of the stronger consciousness towards which we are bound to progress during this age. From many different sides the fact is emphasized, that the development of consciousness would take away from the man of artistic taste some of his simplicity and instinctive feeling and the like, it would make him less sure. If we approach these things from the point of view indicated by spiritual science we shall see that these fears are quite unjustifiable. Through what is usually called the contemplative capacity, the capacity of unbiased Judgment of one’s own actions and self-contemplation much is lost of ordinary consciousness, instinctive power and purely intellectual activity. It is also just through thoughtful intellectual activity that all that can be cited as partaking of an artistic nature is simply lost. What is artistic can in nowise be regulated by the intellect. This is certainly the truth, on the other hand it is also true that when knowledge such as is sought here, becomes force of consciousness, then the ability to see things as they are, the complete relation to reality will not be interfered with. Therefore we need have no fear that we shall become inartistic through the acquisition of consciousness, of the conscious mastery of the means and so on. Through Anthroposophical spiritual science which aims at the knowledge of man, what is usually summed up in rules, in abstract forms, extends to vision. One gets at last a true view of the physical, psychic and spiritual being of man. As little as a simple vision can prevent our creating something artistic, just as little does this higher vision do so. The mistake which becomes evident here is really due to the following. In the Anthroposophical Society, which actually came into being for reasons explained in the little pamphlet The Antagonism to the Goetheanum, and developed from a membership which formerly included many members of the Theosophical Society: Especially those who had grown out of the old Theosophy and many things have been done, and what might be called a dreary doctrine of symbols, a confused symbolism, grew up. I still think with horror of the year 1909 when we presented Schuré’s drama The Children of Lucifer (in the next number of the “drei” my lecture which followed on this performance will be reprinted). I am still shocked when I think how at that time a member of the Theosophical Society, who indeed still remained within it, enquired: “Is not Cleonis, the sentient soul?” and are not the other characters the Consciousness-soul and Manas”? In this way all was nicely proportioned. Various terms used in Theosophy, were assigned to different persons. I once read an interpretation of Hamlet in which the characters were also labelled with all the terms of the separate members of man’s being. Now, as I have already mentioned I have really endured a great deal through the symbolic interpretations of my own Mystery Plays, and I cannot tell you how pleased I was when for once a really artistic interpretation of the first drama was given by Herr Uehli. It may have been too flattering if taken personally, but the interpretation was really artistic; that is to say he spoke as one must in criticising anything of the nature of art, then symbolising is out of place; we must take as our starting point the immediate impression that is the point in question. This dreary symbolism would frighten one away if one desired consciousness, for such symbolism is not a sign of any increase of consciousness in this talking round the subject. It signifies a complete digression from the content and labelling vignettes on to it. It should therefore penetrate into what is really living from the aspect of spiritual science, then we shall find that this growth of the consciousness is necessary in every form of art if it is to march with the times. It would simply remain behind in evolution if it did not take part in the growth of consciousness. This is a necessity.

On the other hand it is not proposed that we should be on our guard against the growth of consciousness here intended as though it were a blight, though this warning is certainly necessary with respect to the ordinary intellectual aestheticism and symbolism. On the contrary we can observe how dramatic art is itself acquiring a certain growth of consciousness. I may perhaps be allowed to mention something further. You see, we can say that there is an extraordinary amount of mischief done by interpreters or biographers of Goethe in relation to what has been said about his artistic powers. They might really be said to be in advance of their time, and we can only say that those men—literary historians, aestheticists and so on—who always speak of Goethe’s unconscious power, of Goethe’s simplicity, really only convince us that they are themselves absolutely unconscious of the working of Goethe’s soul. They attribute their own lack of consciousness to him.

How did Goethe’s most wonderful lyrical productions come into being? They were inspired by life itself. It is rather dangerous to speak about Goethe’s love affairs for we may easily be misunderstood; but the psychologist must not shrink from this. Goethe’s relationship to the women he loved in his youth as well as those whom he loved in later years, was such that the most beautiful lyrics were the outcome. How could this be possible? Because Goethe had as it were a dual nature. In all his external experiences, even in the most intimate and soul-stirring experiences he was always a sort of dual personality. There was the Goethe who did not love less devotedly than any other man; and there was the Goethe who at other times could rise above this, who in a sense looked on as a third person at the objective Goethe beside him, as he developed these love affairs with some woman or other. Goethe was able in a sense—psychologically real—to withdraw out of and from himself, and contemplate his own experiences Through this, something very special was formed in his soul. One must indeed look intimately into Goethe’s soul if one wishes to examine this. It was formed because in the first place he was not so much engrossed in the reality, as people who pass through such an experience merely instinctively with their passions and impulses, being unable to withdraw their souls from it, but living blindly and unrestrainedly within it. In the outer world, of course this led to the result that his love affairs often became such as did not necessarily lead to the usual conclusions. In the form in which the question has been put I do not assert that misunderstandings are impossible; what I say is only meant as an interpretation of Goethe. On the other hand it leads to the result that what remained behind in Goethe’s soul and which might appear simultaneously with those outer life experiences, was sometimes not mere remembrance but a picture, a definite image. Thus were created in Goethe’s soul the wonderful pictures of Gretchen of Frankfurt, Friedcriche of Sesenheim about whom Frensicheimer has just written his Ahasuerus which has been considered worthy of a place in the history of German literature. Thus was originated those wonderful characters of “Lili of Frankfurt” that wonderful character we find in Werther. To these also belong “Kätchen of Leipzig” and even such characters as Marianer Willemer, Ulrike Lewitzow and so on, created in Goethe’s old age. We may say that the character of Frau von Stein alone does not belong to this category. This is due to the whole complexity of this relationship. For the very reason that these relationships led to the creation of such characters, which survived more as a residuum than mere remembrance, inspired the wonderful lyrical transformation of the pictures which lived within him. The consequence of this may even be that such a poem becomes dramatic, and in one instance indeed sublimely dramatic. I refer to the first part of Faust. You will find there that the designation “Gretchen” and “Margarita” are interchangeable. And this leads to something deeply connected with the whole psychic origin of the history of Faust. Everywhere you will find “Gretchen” as the designation of that character taken from the Gretchen of Frankfurt. You will find the name “Gretchen” wherever you have a finished picture such as “Gretchen at the Well”; “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel” and so on, where the lyrical has gradually passed into the dramatic. On the other hand you will find “Margarita” wherever the character has been formed from the ordinary development of the drama. Everything that bears the name of “Gretchen” is a complete picture in itself that is poetically conceived and developed into a dramatic form. This shows how the poetic element can become intimately objective, so that it can be used for a dramatic combination. The dramatic is created in this way, for the dramatist can always stand above his conceptions. As soon as an author begins to put himself in the place of a character he can no longer make it dramatic. then Goethe created the first part of his Faust, he completely put himself into the personality of Faust and for that reason the character is vague, not definite not rounded off. Goethe did not make it quite distinct and objective, as he did the other characters. How a result of this objectivity is also that one can really enter into the characters, one can really behold them and become as it were, identical with them. That is indeed a gift which certainly was possessed by the author of the Shakespearean dramas. The power of presenting a character in a pictorial objective way as a personal experience in order to enter into it as it were, to draw out something from the character must in a sense pass over to the actor and it will become, when developed, part of his consciousness. Goethe's special form of consciousness enabled him to do this, to embody these picture images in a lyrical and dramatic fore, and this he did best of all in reproducing the Frankfurt Gretchen.

The actor must develop something similar, and there are instances of this. I will give you one such. I do not know how many of you have seen the actor Lewinski of the Vienna Burgtheater. Judging by his appearance and his voice he was really not in the least fitted to become an actor and when he described his connection in his own particular art he did so in somewhat the following way. He said: “Yes, I should of course not be able to act at all”—he was one of the chief actors for a long time at the Vienna Burgtheater, perhaps one of the most distinguished players of character parts—“I should not be able to do anything at all, if I were to depend on what I appear to be on the stage, the little hunchback with the squeaky voice and the dreadfully ugly face.” He could of course be nothing at all, but he said: “I have to come to my own aid, I am really always three people on the stage, first, I am the little hunchbacked croaking man who is so frightfully ugly; the second one who is quite outside the one who croaks, is a pure idealist, a quite spiritual being, I must always keep him before me; and then, then only am I the third, and, with the second, I play upon the first, the croaking hunchback.” This must of course be quite consciously done, it must be something which I might say, has become for me a question of management. Indeed the threefold division is extraordinarily important for the technique of theatrical art. It is even necessary, though this can be expressed otherwise—for the actor to learn to know his own body well, for his own corporeality is after all for the real actor the real instrument on which he plays. He must learn to know his own body as the violinist his violin; this he must know, he must to a certain extent be in the position of listening to his own voice. This can be done. He can gradually be able to hear his own voice as though it was flowing around him. He must practise this, however, while trying to recite dramatic, or lyrical verses, but living verses very strong in form, rhythm and time, as far as possible while adapting himself to the verse form. He will gradually feel, that the spoken word is entirely separated from the larynx, that it hums around in the air, and he will attain a sensible yet supersensible impression of his own speech. In a similar way one can then get a sensible-supersensible view of one’s own personality. Only one must not become too affected. You see, Lewinski did not give himself airs, he called himself a little hunchback, an extremely ugly man. One must certainly not become a prey to illusions. He who wishes to be always beautiful, who will concede nothing at all in this respect, will not so easily acquire a knowledge of his body as an instrument. This is, however, absolutely necessary for the actor, for he must be conscious of how he comes on to the stage, how he plants his foot, how he uses his hands, and so on. The actor must realise whether he has a soft tread or a quiet step in ordinary life. he must know how he bends his knees how he movers his hands etc. He must indeed make an attempt to look at himself while he is studying his part. That is what I should like to call “Throwing' oneself into the part”. Indirectly the speech will help very considerable here because through listening to one’s own voice, one’s own 'words, the contemplation of the human figure as a whole follows instinctively.

Question: How could we help usefully in the fieLd of our own immediate work by looking up and collecting theories of the dramatic art, historical documents, for spiritual investigation, writing biographies for actors and so on? (Question incomplete)

In this respect a society of actors could certainly accomplished, a very great deal, only it must be done in the right way. Histories and theories of the drama and biographies of actors will not help much, for I certainly believe that some very considerable objections would be raised against this. The actor, at any rate when he is in full work, should really have no time at all for studying histories of the theatre, dramatic art, and still less biographies of actors! On the other hand a great deal can be accomplished in regard to the direct perception of man and hie immediate characteristics. Here I can recommend something which may prove very useful for the actor.

There is a science of physiognomy by Aristotle. You will easily find everything sketched there? even to a red or pointed nose, the meaning of a smooth or hairy hand, or a fat or lean body, all peculiarities showing how the spirit and soul of man express themselves, how one has to look at them and so on—a very useful study which has only recently gone out of date. We cannot now observe people as Aristotle did his Greeks; we should get quite false results if we did. The actor has opportunities of observing such things because he must represent different people, and if he is wise he will never mention names when referring to these traits, he will not injure his career and his personal intercourse nor his social relationships, although he becomes thus observant. Mr or Mrs or Miss So-and-So must never in any way play a part when he makes his interesting communications of his observations, but always only when Mr. A Mrs B and Miss C, and so on. What refers to outer reality must of course be suppressed as much as possible. If you really study life in this way, if you really notice the curious expression of the nostrils when people make a joke and the importance of paying attention to such things—speaking generally of course in this way we can learn a great deal. The important thing is not so much the knowledge but the thinking and observing on these lines to help one to reach this point. If one thinks and observes in this way one is no longer using the ordinary observation of today. Our observation of the world nowadays is such that a man may perhaps have seen another 30 times and yet not even then know what sort of buttons he has on his waistcoat. Such want of observation is quite possible today.

I have even known people who have talked to a lady the whole afternoon and did not know what the colour of her dress was—a quite incomprehensible fact—but it does happen. Of course such people who do not even know the colour of a lady’s dress after a long interview with her, are not very fitted to direct their powers of observation in the way they must if they are to be used in action. I have even had the nice experience of people assuring me that they did not know whether the dress of the lady with whom they had spent the whole afternoon, was red or blue, if I may add something personal to that, I have even had the experience that people expected me in a similar case, not to know the colour of the lady’s dress either, after I had been speaking with her for a long time! One sees from this how little value is attached to many faculties of the soul. What we see before us must stand out clearly in its full contours; and if we see it thus, and not merely—I might say—as a sort of external nebulous covering, such a perception already passes over into the possibility of modelling and shaping.

So above all an actor must be a keen observer, and in this respect he must be distinguished by a certain humour. He must take these things from a humorous point of view. For, you see, if he had the experience of the professor who for some time left the concert because immediately in front of him sat a student whose top waistcoat button was torn off, so that the professor referred to was forced to concentrate on the absent button, that would not be the power of observation but of concentration. But now one day the torn off button was in its place, and behold the professor lost his power of concentration from that moment. This is a conception of the world without humour. The actor must not be like this, he must look at things humorously, he must always stand above them. He will then be able to give them form.

That is what must be thoroughly observed, and if we accustom ourselves to formulate such things, and really see certain inner connections in bodily perception, rising above it with a certain sense of humour so that we can give it fora but not in a sentimental way of course, we shall also develop in the handling of such a thing that lightness, which one must always have when one wishes to characterise in the world of appearances. But one must characterise in the world of Make-believe, otherwise one always remains a more imitative amateur. Thus in conversing with one another in this way upon social physiognomy, those who are engaged in dramatic art may collect a great deal of that which is of more value than dramatic theory; and especially more so than biographies of actors and historic accounts of the theatre, which can certainly be left to others. Out of that which can be observed and brought out in his art by the actor, (this would be a very interesting chapter on the art of observing man) he would be able to develop just that naive, conscious handling of dramatic art, in which that art specially consists.

Question. What value for our time has the representation of past epochs, e. g. the Greek dramas, the dramas of Shakespeare, and of recent authors such as Ibsen, Strindberg etc?

In regard to dramatic conception the man of today will of course have to make use of other forms, than those used in Greek dramatic art, but that does not hinder us from staging Greek dramas today, indeed it would be a sin if we did not do so. We should however, have better translations, than those of the pedantic Wilamowiz, who because of his extremely literal translations, loses the spirit of those dramas. It must be clear to us that we must introduce to the man of today an art which satisfies his eye and other perceptive faculties. For that purpose it is of course necessary, as regards Greek dramas, that one should live more deeply in them. I do not think, speaking paradoxically—that one can live in the Greek dramas of Aeschylus or Sophocles—though this might be easier with Euripides—without approaching them in the sense of Spiritual Science. The characters in the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles must really become living in this sense, for in spiritual science alone are the elements to be found which our feeling, and impulses of will can recreate in such a way, that we are able to make something of the personages in these dramas. Then, as soon as one can enter into these dramas through spiritual science, it will be possible to make their form live, for spiritual science reveals in a special way the origin of these dramas in the light of the Mysteries. Of course it would be an anachronism if one wished to present them as the Greeks did. This might be done once as a historical experiment, but one would have to be conscious that it was nothing more. The Greek dramas are really too good for that. They can positively live again in the man of today and it would even be a great gain first to re-create them in the sense of spiritual science, and then to transform them into performances.

On the other hand the man of today is able to enter into the particular style of Shakespeare without any special difficulty. That only needs the human feeling of today and absence of prejudice. The characters in Shakespeare should really be looked upon as Hermann Grimm saw them. lie expressed. a paradox which is however, very true; truer than many historical statements; It is really much more sensible to study Julius Caesar in Shakespeare than in a history book. As a matter of fact Shakespeare's imagination makes it possible to enter positively into the character so that it becomes alive, and is more real than any historical representation. It would of course be a pity if we did not desire to perform the Shakeepearean dramas today. It is a question of having the thing so much at heart that one can simply use the ordinary means one has assimilated in the way of technique etc, in impersonating the characters.

Now there certainly lies an abyss between Shakespeare and the French dramatists, whom Schiller and Goethe still took as their model, and the newest dramatists. In Ibsen we really have to do with problem plays and Ibsen should be performed in such a way that we become aware that his characters are really no characters at all. If one wished to make his characters alive in one’s imagination they would be continually hopping round and treading on their own toes! They are not human beings, but the plays are great problem plays, and the problems are such as will always be experienced by people of the time. It is extraordinarily interesting for the actor to try and model himself on Ibsen’s plays today, for if he should try to study the parts he will have to say to himself, “This is indeed no human being? I must create one.” He will have to proceed in an individual manner; he will have to become aware of the fact that when he represents a character of Ibsen’s it may become quite other than when someone else does so. One can bring very much of one’s own individuality into the characters, for they can stand the individual note and being performed in various ways; whereas in Shakespeare, and also in the Greek dramas one should really always have the feeling that there is only one possible conception and towards that one must strive. Certainly one will not always find it at once, but one must have the feeling that there is only one possible interpretation. In Ibsen or even in Strindberg that is not at all the case. These characters must be treated by bringing an individual note into them. It is difficult to express oneself in such matters but I should like to do so metaphorically, you see, with Shakespeare one has wholly the feeling that he is an artist who looks from all sides, that he can see all round, that he really beholds as a complete man and can see others with his whole being. Ibsen could not do that, he could only see superficially. Hence that remarkably drawn character in one of his plays. The hero plants himself behind a chair by the wall where he was separated from everyone, then he allowed his eyes to wander round in order to take a general view. In this way the stories of the world, the people that he sees, are seen superficially. One must first give them substance, and this rests with the individual actor. This is specially the case with Strindberg. I have nothing to say against his dramatic art, I esteem it, but one must look at everything in its own way. Such a play as the Damascus drama is something quite exceptional, yet we must say that the characters are not human, they are mere shapes crammed full of problems. Yes there one can do much, for one can really put one’s whole being into the part, as actor, one must personally add very much to the individual characters.

Question: How does a real work of art, speaking of dramatic art, appear in its effects when seen from the spiritual world, in contradistinction to other activities of man?

The other activities of man are such that one really never sees them as a complete whole. Really men particularly in our day, are formed in a way by their environment, and milieu. Hermann Bahr described this in a lecture in Berlin in a really striking way for he said: “In the nineties of the 19th century something very particular happened to humanity. If one entered a town, a strange town, and met people coming out of the factory in the evening they all looked exactly alike; so that one felt quite anxious. At last one no longer believed that one really saw so many people all alike, but the same one multiplied many times”. He said: "“Then we pass from the nineties into the 20th century”. He alluded coquetishly to the fact that he was very often invited when he came to any town—he said “When I was invited to dinner I always had a lady on my right and on my left, and the next day another lady on my right and left; but I could not tell whether I had a different one each time or not, I did not know if they were the came ladies as yesterday or not” Thus people are a kind of impression of their milieu. This has become particularly so at the present time.

This need not of course be carried so far, but there is something in it. Man in his ordinary activity stands before one in such a way that he must be judged in connection with his whole environment. What a strong impression we can obtain of a man, by knowing his environment! In dramatic art it is a question of really looking at what one sees as something separate, complete in itself. For this, many of the prejudices which play such a part in our inartistic ago must be overcome. To answer this question frankly I shall have to say something which may actually call forth a kind of horror in the aesthetist and carping critics of today.

When it is an artistic representation of persons, we must gradually study and observe that if we are to express passion, sorrow, cheerfulness, to convince or persuade a man, or to scold him, we always feel that it must be accompanied by a quite definite movement of the limbs, with special regard to rhythm. This is still a long way from Eurhythmy, but a quite definite movement of the limbs, a certain kind o slowness or quickness in speaking, is the result of this study. We acquire a feeling that language and movement are independent of each other, that there would be the same cadence, and measure in words, even if they had no meaning, that they have a separate life of their own. We must have the feeling, that the language would be able to flow even if we put together quite senseless words in a definite cadence or measure. We must also feel that we can express our meaning by definite movements. An actor must be able to see himself in his part, he must feel pleasure in making certain movements of his limbs, movements not made for any purpose but to follow a rhythm; for instance, clasping the left arm with the right hand and so on, and he must feel a certain pleasure and satisfaction in this. Further he must say to himself, in rehearsing; “Now as you say this, it takes a tone, a cadence, the movement must be of two kinds”. It must not be supposed that really artistic work would result by laboriously drawing from the poetical content the correct way of speaking, rather must we have the feeling: “The sort of cadence and measure which is appropriate here, you have known a long tine, as well as the movement of the limbs, all you have to do is to remember the right one.” Perhaps he may not have studied it, this signifies that he can certainly discover what he needs; but he must feel that it must be put together out of what he has already studied and he must attain his objective in another way. That is the point.

Question: What is the task of music in dramatic art?

Well, I think we have given the practical answer to that by the way in which we use music in Eurhythmy. I certainly think that it is not to be hastily rejected; atmosphere may be created—even in pure drama—by music before and after; and if the play offers the possibility of music, it should be used. This question is naturally not easy to answer when it is asked in such a general sense; for it is a question of doing the right thing at the right moment.

Question: Is talent a necessary foundation for an actor, or can the equivalent be developed through spiritual-scientific methods in anyone who has love and artistic feeling for dramatic art?

Well, we had a friend at the Weimar Theatre: There, all sorts of people appeared wishing to be tested in this way. Sometimes such aspirations were not encouraged. My friend, who was himself an actor, would very frequently say when asked: “Do you think that something can be made of that man? Well yes if he acquired talent!” There is a certain truth in that. It is indeed quite admissible, and not only admissible, but a deep truth, that one can learn everything if one applies to oneself what flows from spiritual science into the impulses of man. What can be learnt is something which may appear as talent. There is no denying that. But there is a little hitch; we must first live long enough to go through such a development. When by all sorts of means something like the creation of a talent is really acquired in this way, The following may occur. Someone has created a talent, let us say for playing the youthful hero. he may however have taken so long about it that he is now bald and grey. This which is absolutely possible, makes life very difficult. For this reason it is necessary that in regard to the choice of persons suitable for dramatic art—there should be two persons, the one who wishes to become an actor—(there are many of these) and the other, he who has to decide the question. The Latter must have a tremendously strong feeling of responsibility. He must, for instance, be aware that a superficial judgment in this respect may be very wrong, for it is easy to think that a man has no talent for something. It may only be concealed, and if there is any possibility of its coming out in some way, that which was not recognised, can sometimes be brought out comparatively soon, nevertheless, much will depend for practical purposes—life must indeed remain practical—on acquiring a certain capacity for discovering talent; and first of all we must limit ourselves to using what can be acquired through spiritual science—which must be a good deal—in order to make the talent more living and to develop it more quickly. All this is impossible. In the case of people who sometimes take themselves for great dramatic geniuses, it is often necessary to say, that God in his wrath allowed them to be actors; and one must really have the conscientiousness to tell them, kindly of course and without offending them, not to enter the dramatic profession, which after all is not for everyone, as it requires above all the possibility of an inner activity of soul and spirit so as to transfer that easily into the physical body. This is what has specially to be taken into account in this matter.

With regard to exercises for the development of one’s own sense of movement, these cannot be given so quickly. I will occupy myself however, with the matter, and it will also be possible in this direction gradually to approach those who wish to know something about it. These things, if they are to be of any use, must of course be worked out slowly and objectively, from the basis of spiritual science. In this direction I will note the question for a later answer.

Question. Could fundamental and direct limits be given which would lead more deeply into the comprehension and the way of entering into new parts, than can be worked out by practice and tradition? May we also ask for literature in which we can find answers to these and similar questions?

Well, as regards existing literature, I should not like to rely on it too much, for the reasons I have already pointed out in reference to the observation of mankind. You remember what I said before about the buttons and the lady’s dresses! Personal observation is a good preparation. But then well—I believe it is not necessary to say this to the person who asked the Question—but it is indeed rather necessary in regard to the way in which actors perform today. You see, things are such that one is obliged to say, “People who appear on the stage today do not at all want to study their parts”. They mostly just learn them without having any knowledge at all of the content of the whole play. They simply learn their part. This is really a dreadful thing. When I was on the executive committee of the dramatic Society in Berlin and we had to produce dramas such as Maeterlinck’s etc., we formerly bound the actors to listen first of all to a recital of the play, as well as an interpretation of it at a rehearsal. Otherwise the actors would have had to take their parts home, each one would have learnt only his own part, they would have come to the rehearsals, not one would have known what the others could do—it would have been terrible. And then in various other plays in the Burgensisternwal by Max Borcher and in a drama by Julius Gering, which was called, I think, The Seven Loan or Fat Kine, I took pains to introduce into the society at that time, what I called just now an interpretation of the drama, but an artistic interpretation, in which the character became living. We first of all met at a stage gathering, where we tried by all possible mean to make the characters living, through the actor’s own interpretation. When listening to the reciter, it is much easier than when studying by oneself, and all that must be effective if a company is formed from the beginning—namely, the ensemble. I believe this should be recommended in the study of every dramatic, artistic play; above all it should not only be read to the players but interpreted dramatically and artistically. It is absolutely necessary to develop a certain humour and a certain lightness of touch in such matters. Art nearly always needs humour. It must not become sentimental. The sentimental when it has to be represented, as of course it sometimes musty should be first conceived by the actor with humour; he roust always stand above it with full consciousness and not allow his own personality to slip into the sentimental, If the first stage-sittings are occupied in interpreting the play, people will soon cease to look upon the sittings as instructive; if this is done with a certain humour they will see that the time thus saved, and spent in such a way, is well employed, and they will develop a remarkable talent for imitation in the imaginative characters, which they will have to play. That is what I have to say about these things.

Of course speaking of such matters in this way, may seem rather blunt? but the worst point in theatrical representative art is really the desire for realism. Just consider, how could the actors of former times if they had wished to be realistic have represented rightly, let us say, a Lord Chamberlain, whom they had indeed never seen in his full Court dignity, for their social standing made that impossible. But even the precautionary measures customary in Court theatres are really of no assistance here. The various Princes, Grand Dukes, Kings, had perhaps selected a chief stage-manager, because they thought “the theatre people cannot of course know what is done at Court, so we must make some General or perhaps only a Captain who understands nothing of any sort; of art, Stage Manager” These people from precaution, were given the management of the court theatres and had to teach the people a kind of realistic treatment of things as done in Court Society, so that they should know how to conduct themselves, for the theatre people do not go to Court! All that achieves notice, for everything depends on catching the spirit, on the feeling for the bodily movements, for the cadence. One learns from the thing itself what is in question. Thus we can exercise the observance of what proceeds from inner sympathy with the artistic form, without wishing to imitate the exterior. That is what is to be taken into consideration in these things.

For my part I only hope that these indications will not be misunderstood in any way. It is indeed necessary, if one comes to speak on this topic, that it should be treated in such a way that one must take into account the fact that one is concerned with something which must be referred to the realm of balance. Certainly I must say that I shall never forget the great impression made upon me by the first lecture of my honoured old teacher and friend, Carl Julius Schröer, who said of the “aesthetic conscience” of one of these preliminary sittings—“this aesthetic conscience is a living thing”. It brings one to the recognition of the principle that art is not a mere luxury but a necessary adjunct of any existence worthy of man. When that is taken as the fundamental note, then, building upon this key-note one may develop humour and lightness; one can thus reflect as to how one can treat sentimentality humorously, how one can treat sadness by standing completely above it, and the like. This is what must be; otherwise dramatic art cannot fulfil in a satisfactory way the demands which the present age must some day make on man.

I am far from wanting to preach a sermon today on frivolity, not even on artistic frivolity, but I should like to emphasize again and again, that a humorous delicate manner of handling what one has before one, is indeed something which must play a great part in art, and especially in the handling of the technique of art.