Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Language
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remains nothing at all of what the writer of the Gospel of St. John
felt when he wrote, “In the beginning was the Word.” The feeble,
insignificant, meaning we have when we use the word “word” was
certainly not in the mind of the writer of his Gospel when he wrote
the line. In this word “word” lies something quite different. With
us, the “word” is a feeble expression of abstract thoughts. The word
only appeals to abstract thoughts. To the Greeks the word was still
a call to the human will. When a syllable was uttered, the body of a
Greek would tingle to express this syllable through his whole being
also. The Greek still knew that one is not only expressing oneself by
saying, for example, “It is all one to me.” He knew how, when he
heard the phrase, “It is all one to me,” he tingled to make these corresponding
movements (shrugging the shoulders). The word did not
only live in the organ of speech but in the whole of man’s organism
of movement; but humanity has forgotten these things.
If you want to realize how the word—the word that in ancient
Greece still summoned forth a gesture—how the word can live
through the whole being of man, you should go to the demonstration
of eurythmy next week. It is all only a beginning, really a modest
beginning to bring the word into the will once again, to show the
human being (on the stage at any rate, even if it is not possible in
ordinary life) in such a way that the word actually lives in the movements
of his arms and legs. And when we introduce eurythmy into
our schools, it is a humble beginning—and must still be regarded
as such today to make the word once more a moving factor in the
whole of life.
In Greece there was still quite a different feeling—a feeling that
came over from the East. There was a tingling, an urge in the human
being to let the will reveal itself through the limbs, with every syllable,
with every word, every phrase, with the rhythm and measure
of every phrase. He realized how the word could become creative in
every movement. But in those days he knew still more. Words were to
him expressions for the forces of cloud formation, the forces lying in
the growth of plants and all natural phenomena. The word rumbled
in the rolling waves, worked in the whistling wind. Just as the word
lives in my breath so that I make a corresponding movement, so did