liturgy of the seasons (11)

a weekly translation of Rudolf Steiner’s Seelenkalender verse

IN the 1920s, Rudolf Steiner created a sort of liturgy of the natural and spiritual year in the form of fifty-two short verses. Experience—my own and others—testifies to the powerful effect that a short meditation on the relevant verse throughout the course of the year can have in respect to awakening and sensitizing the soul to each season’s unique quality and gesture.

Below is Dr. Steiner’s original Seelenkalender, or “Calendar of the Soul” verse for this week followed by my translation into English. I have opted to follow, whenever a conflict arose, the spirit over the letter in my translation efforts, attempting to convey the “mood” before the propositional content.

ELEVENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

11. Es ist in dieser Sonnenstunde
An dir, die weise Kunde zu erkennen:
An Weltenschönheit hingegeben,
In dir dich fühlend zu durchleben:
Verlieren kann das Menschen-Ich
Und finden sich im Welten-Ich.

∇∆

IN these long-drawn sunlit hours
Wisdom lends her voice to thee:
“cast thyself amongst the world’s lustre
to re-emerge with feeling’s pearl, now see:
the Human Soul may now herself surrender
to find herself within the World-Soul again.”

Photo by Sergey Shmidt on Unsplash