HANS RICHTER

| RHYTHM

The rhythm of a work is equal to the idea of the whole. Rhythm is the thing that informs ideas, that which runs through the whole: senseprinciple, from which each individual work first gets its meaning. Rhythm is not definite, regular succession in time or space, but the unity binding all parts into a whole. The emotional world, as well as the intellectual, has laws governing its expression. It is much more the inner, nature-force which directly forms and animates ideas, through which we are bound up with the elemental nature forces. Just as the path of the intellectual formulating-power leads to thought, as a justifying moment of intellectual activity, so the emotional formulating-power leads to rhythm as the essence of emotional expression. Just as thought gives the value to an abstract work so rhythm gives a meaning to forms. Abstract activity for its own sake is the same as formal games for their own sake, they can be ingenious or subtle, but in any case they are futile, so long as they do not follow, to the letter, the whole determining impulse. Rhythm expresses something different from thought. The meaning of both is incommensurable. Rhythm can not be explained completely by thought nor can thought be put in terms of rhythm, or converted or reproduced. They both find their connection and identity in common and universal human life, the life principle, from which they spring and upon which they build further. The analysis of a rhythm can thus only be undertaken quite generally and comparatively, so long as it does not deal with material construction, with the discipline of building. The Little Review 11 (Winter 1926): 21.