Poetry Steiner, Rudolf: The Calendar of the Soul (english)

[medard]

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (25/27 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and scientist. Steiner gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the 20th century, he founded a spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as a science growing out of idealist philosophy.

Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual component. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang Goethe's world view, in which »Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.« A consistent thread that runs from his earliest philosophical phase through his later spiritual orientation is the goal of demonstrating that there are no essential limits to human knowledge.

This Special Edition ›Die Wochensprüche des anthroposophischen Seelenkalenders im Doppelstrom der Zeit beider Hemisphären‹ contains the english translation of Ruth and Hans Push, a preface from Rudolf Steiner, an essay from Hans Push and the original german version.

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[Prestidigitweeze]

What a fascinating upload! I have a friend who works at a Rudolf Steiner school in San Francisco.

Steiner has an interesting quote to the effect that the Gothic arch embodied and announced the rising shape of spirituality in the Western world. I'm not sure I agree, but I love the cresting serial clauses used in the original quote, with their onomatopoeic suggestion of an inert thing awakening.

I was looking for that when I chanced upon this bit:

We cannot fail to realize that a Gothic building, with its characteristic forms, is trying to express something that is never as separate and complete in itself as a Greek Temple. Every Gothic form seems to reach out beyond its own boundaries, to express the aspirations of those within its walls; there is everywhere a kind of urge to break through the enclosing walls and mingle with the universe. The Gothic arch arose, of course, from a deep feeling for the dynamic element; but there is something in all Gothic forms which seems to lead out and beyond. They strive, as it were, to make themselves permeable.

Another quote (to paraphrase) suggests that, when we say we've seen an angel, what we mean is that we've felt the presence of an angel gazing at us. Whether you believe in such things or not, it's a nice description of the paradox of intuition. And Steiner wrote it well before Handke did the screenplay for Wings of Desire.

Rilke is probably behind it all with the Duino Elegies. A friend recently translated part of that cycle while staying at the Duino Castle in Italy, where Rilke wrote the original poems.

Thanks again! Transferring your book to my PRS-350 right after I save this post and close my browser.

[Spinnenmonat]

your excellency, if it were the german original...

[hidari]

Excellent. Cheers for the upload..... Reading it now....