liturgy of the seasons (33)

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.

THIRTY-THIRD WEEK OF THE YEAR

33. So fühl ich erst die Welt,
Die außer meiner Seele Miterleben
An sich nur frostig leeres Leben
Und ohne Macht sich offenbarend,
In Seelen sich von neuem schaffend,
In sich den Tod nur finden könnte.

∇∆

FOR the first, that world I now behold
which, without my soul’s participation
were but a bleak and barren land
cold, it were, and unensouled,
bereft of revelatory power
without a soul to whom it would itself unveil
could naught but pine and fade.

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