Goetheanum | Creating Something New from the History of Eurythmy

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Creating Something New from the History of Eurythmy

Together with other authors, Martina Maria Sam and Stefan Hasler explore the history of eurythmy. Soon, the consolidated new edition of the Dionysian and Apollonian courses will be published.

Franka Henn For all those unfamiliar with eurythmy, one must ask: What do the Greek deities Dionysus and Apollo have to do with eurythmy?

Martina Maria Sam It was not so much that Rudolf Steiner named the two courses as such; rather, it was the eurythmists. They also simply referred to these lessons as the first and second courses. However, there are indications in both courses that they were later named this way. Dionysus is the god of personality, the subjective, the creative, the productive, the inventive; Apollo stands more for form and harmony in the whole. There is a microcosmic and a macrocosmic approach to dealing with language. Rudolf Steiner once said in a lecture on the development of language that the Logos was, so to speak, "torn apart." The creative-sound aspect and the meaningful-thinking aspect of language were once a unity – distinct from each other, yet connected in a harmonious "dual unity." Over the course of development, the thinking aspect was initially pushed "too high" into the head. This resulted in concepts that were too general and not individualised. The creative-sound aspect, on the other hand, was pushed "too deep" into the subconscious of the human being and connected there with the egoistic part, which manifests, for example, in the nationalistic emphasis on one’s own native language. Rudolf Steiner gave suggestions on how to reconnect the two parts of the Logos; this is also reflected in these two eurythmy courses. The history of the individual courses is also linked to different women: the impulse of the Dionysian with the youthful Lory Smits, the Apollonian course with Tatiana Kisseleff.

Henn How did these two courses then come about?

Sam After the initiating question about eurythmy from Clara Smits, Rudolf Steiner initially gave her daughter Lory some instructions, until in 1912, alongside the cycle on the Gospel of Mark in Basel, he had more time and gave her nine lessons. Tatiana Kisseleff, who led the eurythmy work in Dornach, reported that in March 1915 she showed Rudolf Steiner poems by Christian Morgenstern in eurythmy, and he then said that the foundations given so far were no longer sufficient and that there needed to be a new course. For August/September, the four people who were already giving eurythmy courses at that time were invited: besides Lory Smits and Tatiana Kisseleff, also Erna Wolfram and Elisabeth Dollfus. And because Rudolf Steiner had written a new poem, the "Twelve Moods," for the performance of which he needed 19 eurythmists, a whole number of other young women who worked on the construction of the First Goetheanum as carvers or painters were also brought in. Thus, these 22 lessons ultimately took place for 19 participants plus Marie Steiner and Mieta Waller as well as the three mothers Marguerite Dollfus, Elise Wolfram and Clara Smits.

This text is an excerpt from an article published in the weekly journal "Das Goetheanum." You can read the full article on the weekly journal’s website.