16 talks preceding eurythmy performances (CW 277 / 277a) The art of eurythmy strives to make the invisible visible in a harmonious and disciplined play of color, form, sound, and motion. During the early years of the twentieth century when eurythmy was young and little known, Rudolf Steiner's introductory talks prepared nearly 300 audiences for their encounters with this wholly new way of presenting drama, poetry, and music through human movement. Full of life and creativity, these talks illuminate the richness underlying the spiritual laws of this new art form. Sixteen of Steiner's talks on eurythmy are presented here as an introduction to the aesthetic, pedagogical, and therapeutic secrets of this developing art. This volume contains translations of 1st lecture in Die Entstehung und Entwickelung der Eurythmie (GA 277a); and 15 lectures in Eurythmie als Impuls für künstlerisches Betätigen und Betrachten (current Eurythmie. Die Offenbarung der sprechenden Seele, GA 277).
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory. In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine. Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
Interesting lectures, which were given before the first Eurythmy performances. Nice insights into what Steiner thought about the art form and what was being done. Glad I read them all, even though he does get redundant.