Rudolf Steiner’s Calendar of the Soul Verse 52

Introduced by Walter Alexander

watercolor by Kathie Young

Verse 52, courtesy of  Mercury Press:

translations, top to bottom:

1st column: original German; Daisy Aldan; Owen Barfield; John F. Gardner

2nd column: Brigitte Knaack; Isabel Grieve; Ernst Lehrs; Ruth & Hans Pusch

This is the culminating verse of the year, and fittingly the last two lines capture the entire gesture. But we notice that all of the translators with the exception of the exceptional Owen Barfield translate Menschensein as “human life.” With that we lose entirely any distinction between “Wesen” and “Sein.” Geistes Wesen (the spirit’s being) and human Menschensein (human existence).

Please read the following extract from Steiner’s Leading Thoughts.

Further Leading Thoughts, issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society
(Rudolf Steiner Leading Thoughts – 1973 Rudolf Steiner Press):

We have the uniting of the Spirit (which is never meaningless and is always consonant with the living Word) with human existence—which in order to receive the possibility of freedom has to experience itself and the sense world after the withdrawal of Divine Being as the “accomplished work.”

In the closing of the year, in a deed of absolute love, they find each other. Please note that in Kathie Young’s painting, rather than an overwhelming radiance of the sun, we find a harmonious balance of light (fire), air, water and earth.